The election of Donald Trump into the White House could put tens of thousands of Irish jobs at risk.
The President Elect had vowed to bring major American corporations who had set up their base in other countries back to the US.
This could see huge multinational companies such Google, Apple, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn leave Ireland and head back to the States.
This would mean that hundreds of thousands of Irish employees would be out of work. Latest figures show that almost 200,000 Irish people are employed by foreign multinationals – many from the USA.
During the election campaign, Mr Trump said that he would slash corporation tax from 35% to 15%. His senior advisor Stephen Moore has predicted that ‘a flood’ of companies would return to the US.
Mr Moore told the BBC: “I believe that when we cut these tax rates – we’re going to cut our business tax rate from roughly 35% down to roughly 15 to 20% – if you do that you are going to see a flood of companies leaving Ireland and Canada and Germany and France and they are going to come back to the United States.
“There is no question about it, and we see day after day in this country that we are losing our businesses and our corporations.
They are effectively renouncing their US citizenship and they are moving to Canada, to Britain, to Ireland, to China and Mexico.
“That is a significant loss of jobs and we want to have the jobs here in the United States, we don’t want to have them go abroad. It’s going to have a very high impact on jobs.”
Written by Michael Kehoe @michaelcalling
