(Alliance News) - President Donald Trump has said he does not want "to do anything to hurt Ireland" but added that the trade relationship between the countries should be focused on "fairness".
Trump levelled accusations against Ireland and the EU during a bilateral meeting with Irish premier Micheal Martin in the Oval Office on Wednesday.
The president raised the "massive" trade imbalance between the two countries and said Ireland is "of course" taking advantage of the US.
He accused the Irish government of "taking" US pharmaceutical companies through attractive taxation measures and criticised the EU's ruling that found that Apple owes Ireland billions of euro in taxes.
Trump told reporters in the Oval Office: "There's a massive deficit that we have with Ireland and with other countries too, and we want to sort of even that out as nicely as we can, and we'll work together.
"But the deficit is massive."
Asked if Ireland was also taking advantage of the US, he said: "Of course they are. I have great respect for Ireland, for what they did and they should have done just what they did. But the US shouldn't have let that happen. We had stupid leaders, we had leaders who didn't have a clue.
"All of a sudden Ireland has our pharmaceutical companies, this beautiful island of five million people has got the entire US pharmaceutical industry in its grasps."
Trump told reporters that he loved Ireland and had received a large share of the Irish-American vote before adding: "We don't want to do anything to hurt Ireland but we do want fairness and he understands that."
He said that Apple Inc had been "treated very badly", referring to an EU court ordering the company to pay back taxes in Ireland.
Martin interjected to say "we fought with them" on the EU case.
"It's the EU, isn't it? The EU is going after our companies," Trump said when asked if Apple should relocate from Dublin back to the US.
"We have a problem in the EU. They don't take our farm products. They don't take our cars.
"We take millions of cars, BMWs and Mercedes-Benz and Volkswagens and everything, we take millions of cars.
"I'm not happy with the EU and we're going to win that financial battle."
He said previous presidents had "lost big segments" of the US economy, adding that the "EU treats us very badly".
"They have not been fair. They sue our companies and win massive amounts of money. They sued Apple, won USD17 billion and they use that for other reasons, I guess, to run the EU.
"So I'm not knocking it. They're doing what they should be doing, perhaps for the EU, but it does create ill will – and as you know, we're going to be doing reciprocal tariffs so whatever they charge us with, we're charging them. Nobody can complain about that."
Trump greeted Martin outside the West Wing and the pair shook hands, ahead of their sit-down engagement in the Oval Office.
The taoiseach highlighted a "two-way street" of investment between the nations in a bid to address the concerns around the US-Ireland trade imbalance raised by the president.
Martin also praised Trump's work on "peace initiatives" for Ukraine and Gaza.
Ahead of the meeting, there was heightened concern around Trump's protectionist approach to tariffs and tax could pose a significant risk to an Irish economy that is in large part sustained by long-standing investment by US multinationals.
Trump will later be presented with a bowl of shamrock as the centrepiece of the Irish government's major overseas diplomatic push in the run-up to St Patrick's Day on March 17.
Earlier on Wednesday, Martin also attended a breakfast meeting at the US vice-president's official residence.
Martin and his wife Mary were greeted by Vice-President JD Vance and his wife Usha at the US Naval Observatory.
The taoiseach is also scheduled to attend the Friends of Ireland luncheon hosted by House Speaker Mike Johnson at the US Capitol.
By David Young, PA, in Washington DC
Press Association: News
source: PA
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