US/EU trade talks go down to the wire

Don't be silly. Trump is fixated on the balance of trade in goods. The UK got a not-terrible deal from Trump because the UK runs a trade deficit in goods with the US; (also because Trump badly needed at least one deal). Ireland runs a very substantial trade surplus in goods, and Trump doesn't need a deal with Ireland. The notion that Ireland would get a UK-mirror deal if it wasn't in the EU is a fairly stupid one; not being in the EU doesn't make Ireland into the UK, either in general or from a US perspective specifically.

Other countries with a trade surplus in goods that have made deals with the US are subject to baseline tariff rates of 19% (the Phillipines), 19% (Indonesia), between 10% and 34% (China), 20%-40% (Vietnam); 15% (Japan).

It seems very unlikely that Ireland, negotiating on its own, would secure a baseline tariff of less than 15%.

PS: The "Germany is run by the car-makers" trope was pretty comprehensively demolished during the Brexit period. I woulnd't be attempting to resurrect it now unless I wanted to cosplay someone with short-term memory loss. Besides, auto exports represent only about 15% of Germany's exports to the US; the notion that they "don't care" about the other 85% is unconvincing.

The problem Trump has is that relocating pharma production to the US will be difficult and expensive and will take time. And heavy tariffs on pharma imports will really piss off both a lot of voters, and a lot of politically powerful health insurers and healthcare providers. (It's notable that pharmaceuticals were expressly exempt from the tariffs announced by Trump on Stupid Tuesday; this is why. Instead, the Dept of Commerce announced an investigation into the whole question of pharma imports; this is not scheduled to complete until the end of the year.)

The obvious strategy for Trump here is a sectoral pharma policy along these lines: heavy tariffs on pharma to apply from a stated time in the future, but tariff rebates at that time for the products of companies that produce at least X% of their global production in the US. That gives pharma producers a window of opportunity to relocate a large amount of their production from foreign-land to the US, and so not suffer tariffs. IIRC, Trump has already hinted at a policy of this kind.

But there's two problems with that:

First, that still means significant price rises for pharma products. There's a reason why all that pharma is produced outside the US in the first place, and relocating to the US will raise the cost of production. So this still pisses off voters and the healthcare industry; it just pisses them off a bit less. On the bright side, it's the next administration that will bear the brunt of this pissed-offedness.

Which brings us to the second problem: given the nature of pharma production and the amount of capital invested in it, a reasonable time to allow a substantial relocation of that production is at least three years, and probably considerably longer. (AstraZenica has announced a $50 billion investment in US production facilities, but it will take until 2030 to roll it out; they, and any other producer investing in US production, will strongly urge that the timeframe for relocating production to avoid tariffs has to be realistic.) Any policy announced by Trump on tariff rates is not taken very seriously anyway; he changes tariff rates more often than he changes his underwear. But a policy announcement about tariff rates that are supposed to be applied under a different, and as yet unknown, President is meaningless.

Where does this leave the EU? Probably urging a sectoral exemption for pharma from whatever US tariffs are applied under any EU/US trade deal or, as the post above suggests, a limitation or cap on pharma tariffs. They know there will be powerful domestic US interests pressing for the same thing, and they know the cost to Trump of conceding this is not great, given that he already implicitly recognised that he can't, realistically, impose heavy tariffs on pharma. And he has a justification for this; it would be premature to impose heavy tariffs on pharma while his own Dept of Commerce investigation is continuing.

A special deal for pharma is not a shoe-in; to put it mildly, Trump does not always act in a rational manner. But it'll certainly be something the EU is targetting in negotiations.