DANIEL MULHALL, former Irish Ambassador to the USA and former Ambassador to the UK, considers Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office
The White House (image by Diego Delso on Wikimedia Commons)THE American President is always an important figure in world affairs. No-one anywhere can afford to ignore him. More so than other Europeans, Irish people tend to take an active interest in the USA. When I served in Washington, I was struck by how plugged in visiting Irish people often were about American political life.
Language is probably part of the explanation, making it easier for us to follow what goes on there. And, of course, generations of emigrants have given us genuine people-to-people and family connections.
It’s fair to say that the whole world has been agog this past three months, unable to avert its eyes from the political theatre being played out in the White House day after day since the Trump inauguration. Metaphorically, Trump has broken the crockery all around him.
His second-term has set a frenetic pace, crashing through past Presidential norms at every turn. Domestically, he has leaned on big law firms and Ivy League universities, and has set Elon Musk on the Federal Government with the administrative equivalent of a chainsaw. Civil servants have been fired at will and immigrants rounded up and summarily deported.
The Administration has been willing to skirt around court orders while the President has fired off angry broadsides against judges who have stood in the way of his policies.
Many in America have decided to bend the knee in the hope of staying out of his firing line. The President has control of all the levers of power and seems determined to take full advantage of his position to drive home his policy agenda.
There is some semblance of resistance mustering to push back against Trump, but the next serious electoral test will not come until the Congressional mid-terms in November 2026 when Democrats will hope to seize control of the House of Representatives and use it as a buffer against untrammeled Presidential power.
While President Trump’s domestic agenda worries many Americans, for Ireland it is his international actions that raise the alarm.
Ireland has uniquely intensive economic ties with the USA, based on huge two-way flows of trade and investment that support 100,000s of jobs all over Ireland. Those business links are important to Americans too, but less so proportionately of course. The on-off imposition of tariffs and the uncertainty and unpredictability surrounding the future course of US policy has made Irish people nervous about the economic horizon.
An Irish Times poll reveals that 61% of Irish people believe that the economy will be worse off in 12 months’ time while 82% are worried about the impact of the Trump Presidency on their future. Irish visitor numbers to America also dropped by 27% in March, due in part it seems to anxieties about Trump’s America.
Trade negotiations are underway between Brussels and Washington and I think there is a fair chance that an agreement can be reached in the coming months.
I say that because Donald Trump prides himself, rightly or wrongly, on being an unequalled deal maker. During his first term, he growled at Canada and Mexico, but then did a deal with them although that did not stop trade hostilities from breaking out between the three countries when Trump returned to the White House.
The other reason for measured optimism is that Trump’s stand-off with China’s President Xi shows no sign of abating. China seems determined to hit back hard at American interests. Trump cannot afford to be at loggerheads simultaneously with the EU and China. At his meeting with the Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni, the President expressed breezy confidence in the likelihood of an EU-US trade deal, and it all depends on him.
Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, leader of the right wing Brothers of Italy (Fdl) party (Photo by Pier Marco Tacca/Getty Images)Trump is a uniquely powerful President.
While I am hopeful that a full-blown transatlantic trade war can be avoided, I do not believe that things will ever go back to where they stood before the whirlwind of Trump’s First Hundred Days. Europeans have had a wake-up call, discovering that the US is no longer the kind of reliable friend we have had since the end of World War II. The rank hostility of the Trump team towards Europe revealed in the text messages sent inadvertently to a journalist squares with what I came across in Washington during Trump‘s first term. Those sentiments cannot be set aside and Europeans are drawing their own conclusions. I hope it will prompt moves to strengthen the European Union and a push to create autonomous European security arrangements so that we will not continue to be overly dependent on the United States for our prosperity and security.
I do not foresee any turning way from America and consider it unlikely that US companies, under pressure from Washington, will disinvest in Ireland.
The Republic continues to offer a very good value proposition for US companies, based on EU market access, a highly-skilled workforce and a business-friendly corporate tax regime. But, as Bob Dylan sang many years ago, “The Times they are a Changin’’. Ireland and the EU need to recognise the new reality and respond smartly to the risks and opportunities involved.
The first hundred days have exceeded all expectations in the speed and swirl of developments. We wait to see if Donald Trump has a pause button to press. At the end of 100 days in overdrive, a reminder that there are just over 1,350 days to go until US Presidential Inauguration Day 2029.
Daniel Mulhall is a retired Irish Ambassador (who has served in London and Washington), a consultant and an author. His latest publication is Pilgrim Soul: W.B. Yeats and the Ireland of his Time (New Island Books, 2023). He can be followed on X: @DanMulhall and Bluesky: @danmulhall.bsky.social
