The arrival of Trump 2.0 in the White House has disrupted the foreign and defence policies of all states and shattered existing paradigms of world order. Political leaders across the globe are having to assess how they respond to this more unpredictable and precarious world. For Ireland, the task is all the more difficult because the country’s core geopolitical anchors – the US and EU – are under stress.
Donald Trump’s Maga policy challenges Ireland’s political economy, which relies on extensive US investment. Although cordial, taoiseach Micheál Martin’s recent meeting with Trump in the Oval Office provided the US president with the opportunity to level the charge that Ireland “took” the US’s pharmaceutical companies, and that the US now wants them back. Moreover, Ireland is not insulated from the tensions surrounding the emerging trade war between the US and the EU. At the same Oval Office meeting, the taoiseach had to sit and listen to a tirade against Europe, in which Trump claimed the EU was “set up in order to take advantage of the United States”.
