Howard Lutnick has renewed his attack on Ireland calling the country his favourite “tax scam”.
Mr Lutnick said Ireland has all the US multinational technological and pharmaceutical intellectual property (IP) rights and this deprives the United States of tax revenue.
“That’s gotta end,” he told the All-In podcast, aimed at venture capitalists in Washington DC.
Mr Lutnick erroneously claimed that Ireland had a $60 billion (€55.4 billion) surplus last year. In fact the budget surplus was €25 billion ($27 billion) which included a once-off €14 billion Apple payment.
He told the podcast: “So we lose two trillion and they make 60. You’d say, Ireland, what do they do? Oh, they have all of our IP for our great tech.
“All our great tech companies and great pharma companies. They all put it there because it’s low tax and they don’t pay us. They pay them. So that’s got to end. So when those things end, tariffs, Trump card, getting rid of tax scams to get fair tax, that’s my trillion.”
[ US-Ireland trade deficit: what is it and what might Donald Trump do about it?Opens in new window ]
Mr Lutnick said he and Elon Musk were committed to balancing the US budget. He would raise $1 trillion in taxes, mostly through tariffs, and Musk would cut spending by $1 triillion through the Department of Government Expenditure (DOGE).
Mr Lutnick, who is a long-time friend of US president Donald Trump and one of the biggest advocates of global tariffs, has long targeted Ireland as a potential source of revenue for the US Treasury.
He told Fox News last week, a day after Taoiseach Micheál Martin visited the White House, that Ireland was a “tax scam” and he inflated Ireland’s budgetary surplus further stating it amounted to $75bn (€71bn).
Mr Lutnick also told Fox News that the US president had an “aspiration” to waive taxes on Americans earning under $150,000 a year, but only after the budget is balanced which he believed could be achieved before president Trump’s term ends in 2028.
Before he became commerce secretary, Lutnick wrote on his X feed: “It’s nonsense that Ireland of all places runs a trade surplus at our expense. We don’t make anything here any more – even great American cars are made in Mexico. When we end this nonsense, America will be a truly great country again. You’ll be shocked.”
