Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Tuesday, 15 July 2025
Committee on Budgetary Oversight
Quarterly Economic Commentary: Economic and Social Research Institute
2:00 am
Dr. Conor O'Toole:
One would expect so but I am not sure whether those are the calculations being used by the American Administration. It has many different objectives and it is using these various tariff measures as part of trying to meet its political objectives. As I mentioned earlier in response to Deputy Mairéad Farrell, what really matters is what goods are covered by tariffs and whether some of the services activity gets pulled into the non-tariff barriers, if there is an escalation of the trade war element of the negotiation process. If the pharmaceutical industry is exempt and non-tariff barriers are not applied to services activity, the impact will be much less than if that occurs.
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