Donald Trump the Megathread part II - Mod Warning updated in OP 12/2/26

US pharma accounts for 40% of our exports. US multinationals account for 75% of our tax take. A dependency like that was not a wise decision.

We had a chance to become an energy superpower. Exporting green electricity and hydrogen across europe but we've pretty much missed the boat on that. We could have been ablr to guarantee citizens and businesses a max cost per kw and attracted more investment. Instead we're stuck paying dictators for oil and importing LNG. We squander opportunities because we wait for someone else to do it for us.

We were never going to become a global leader of energy. That idea was based on the Green Party myth that we could harvest offshore wind off our West coast using floating wind turbines to achieve high capacity factors. Even Eamon Ryan finally admitted that the technology was not available, nor would it be for at least a decade if ever. The abandoning by Corio Generation of the Sceirde Rocks €1.4 Billion contract, which was for fixed turbines, shows how much of a myth that global leader of exporting energy was.

The net exporters of energy in Europe are those that use nuclear for their generation. France alone is making an annual profit of €5 Billion doing so.

Agreed, and I am glad they are being reined in.

Scott would indeed have her in knots. Having people like Carla on just shows how nuts the MAGA nuts are in America. They need to be shown up for what they are. You also have to ask why do people like Farage and others support Carla's views?

The UK, Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden are set to follow  in rejecting Trump’s proposed “Peace Council”, according to Bloomberg — dealing a serious blow to Trump’s aberrational initiative. On the other hand, Italy presenting itself as a bridge builder and saying it will "play our part"

So wrong.

vCJD ?

John Lee and some of the panelists are rightly showing up the Irish Government especially as John Lee said his producer just told him that the Germans have announced they are in favour of The Bazooka option, and the Irish Government are trying to appease Trump.

You just described Singapore. Yet you seem to want us to be the old sands of Tajikistan.

You're living in the past.

The north of England and rust belt of the US, among others, tried kicking and screaming to hold on to indigenous industry, and now they are destitute.

Whatever else Irish governments did, we had the foresight to know that it was going to be race to the bottom on pricing with developing countries that we could never, ever match.

So we went high. Take a high value activity and always be adding more value. We educated the kids to be among the best in the world and offered a stable location with a benign security and climate environment and put out the welcome mat.

And we've become a global leader in agri-tech, fintech and life sciences for the last 40 years.

So what you've been saying is utter tosh, simply because you haven't even tried to understand it.

Human Development Index

Gross national income per capita (NOT GDP to avoid any FDI skew)

Consolidated prosperity index, made up of 300 social and economic indicators like health, life expectancy, educational attainment, savings, household and business debt, asset values etc

I could list 160 countries that would love to have a pretend economy just like ours.

I don't know where you're getting that from. The old reactors are all gone and they won't come back.

The CDU is openly musing, but that is absolutely no plan to go back to nuclear.

well I saw CJD and I was sure. The v I think stands for varient. It’s been nearly twenty years since I worked in that area.

I understand it perfectly. I also understand that we're balancing on a tightrope and we don't control either end. Any economy has to have balance, we don't. We don't need to match China and produce cheap ****. Theres countries all over Europe producing high end products that plenty of customers favour. We have a few of them here like McHale and Combilift, but theres no where near enough of them.

Without indigenous industry we're just waiting for the day someone pulls the rug. And when 75% of your economy is in one basket then the result could be like a nuclear bomb going off.

Sure but like even disfiguring yourself for power and wealth is some kind of mental illness in mind. Would you melt your face for $100m? I certainly wouldn't

Regarding Pharma, no, no they won't. They already could if they wanted to, Ireland is not that cheap to do business in but it's not as simple with pharma as it is with normal manufacturing.

One of the biggest costs, and definitely one of the biggest time considerations is accreditation and approval particularly with the FDA in America and EMA in Europe. That can take years, on top of actually building you production site for quality to be assessed, monitored, and approved. One of Ireland's biggest strengths is that we have a well established and varied Pharma industry here, not just American ones either, leading to a massive wealth of knowledge and experience in registering drugs and getting the production approved.

You and I could assemble a PC in our kitchen with components bought off ebay and then sell it on. If we were Walter White we could probably brew up some pharmaceuticals in our shed, but good luck selling them on.

Also add in the fact that most American pharma companies here are not producing for the American Market but for European or global sales. Imagine if following Trump's orders they did abandon Europe because of.some trade war, and magically had production space ready to take up the new demand levels in America, would Europe then allow their sale here or just issue licences to European generics. Would American pharma companies be willing to write off billions in infrastructure and sales, just because a rapidly becoming very unpopular 2nd term President said so.