Duncan Smith (Dublin Fingal East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Last night Donald Trump took aim at every traditional ally of the United States with a blunt and destructive economic weapon. The tariffs his administration has imposed worldwide risk plunging us all into a global recession. In his Rose Garden address, Donald Trump exhibited zero economic rationale for pursuing such an approach but perhaps proved why he is one of very few people in the history of the planet that ended up bankrupting a casino.

The President accused states, both friends and foe, essentially of fiscal grand larceny with no basis for these claims. The great deceiver that he is stated his tariffs were reciprocal, claiming the EU charging VAT justifies his tariffs. He even claims that these are discounted tariffs based on a made up 39% rate he claims the EU applies to the United States. Again, there is no basis to these claims.

There is a new reality coming to bear in the world and the United States, unfortunately, can no longer be trusted as an economy ally. In responding to this change in our relationship, the European Union needs to be measured but resolute. We need to be strategic in how we respond to these announcements with negotiations first but at the same time we cannot allow Trump to run roughshod over global markets without standing up to him. We need to react with urgency and not panic.

There is no doubt that Donald Trump is displaying traits of a wannabe strong man who sees an opportunity to damage democracies around the world. With only 25% of global citizens now living under liberal democracies compared with 50% in 2004, it is more important than ever that we take a stand against any attempt to weaken other democracies. We must resist the rise of the autocrat. We now need to play our role as a member of the EU to bring the US to the negotiating table but to do that we will have to stand firm with our allies and our allies will have to stand firm with us.

In this House, our focus must be on helping workers in Irish firms preparing for the threat of job displacement in vulnerable sectors. We in Labour, with a policy led by my colleague, Deputy Nash, want to see a new short-term wage subsidy scheme such as the German kurzarbeit model which would keep workers in their jobs in order to retain skills and employment in exposed parts of the economy during what will be a tumultuous period. We have been calling for this since the pandemic and the money to fund this scheme can be found in the Social Insurance Fund and the National Training Fund both of which are in substantial surplus. We also need to diversify our economy and we need to continue to invest in our infrastructure. We need to learn from the lessons of the past because if we are not careful, we will lose the ability to grow our economy through haemorrhaging our skilled people and economic attractiveness through underinvestment in public transport and housing infrastructure.

The Tánaiste has already hosted briefings and has said he will host more. I welcome that and I hope that they will continue. Will he confirm if the Government is considering a short-term wage subsidy scheme model or any other Ireland-specific model which will help keep workers in their jobs?

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