The US Secretary of Commerce has once again criticised Ireland, calling the country his favourite "tax scam".
"We're going to try and fix a whole bunch of these tax scams. Ireland is my favourite," Howard Lutnick told the business and technology podcast All-In this week.
He also claimed that Ireland has all the US multinational pharmaceutical and technological intellectual property (IP) rights, which leaves the United States worse off.
"They have all of our IP for 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 [Ireland]. So that's got to end," he said.
In response, the Tánaiste said that in his view, the focus should be on strengthening the "deeply integrated relationship" between Ireland and the US that has "stood both extremely well over many decades".
In a statement, Simon Harris said it is a two-way relationship which is based on mutual respect.
"Ireland deeply values its economic partnership with the US and the economic relationship between the EU and the US," he said.
"It is very much a two-way relationship that has strengthened over each generation and one that is based on mutual respect and one that creates significant jobs and investment in both Ireland, the US and the EU," he added.
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Mr Harris acknowledged that Ireland has benefitted "significantly from US investment" but said that US companies have done very well in Ireland.
"It has been a very good location for them in terms of our labour force and access to the EU single market," he said.
'Ireland runs trade surplus at our expense'
This is not the first time the US Secretary of Commerce has criticised Ireland.
The former CEO of the global finance house Cantor Fitzgerald previously attacked Ireland's trade relationship with the US.
"It's nonsense that Ireland of all places runs a trade surplus at our expense. We don't make anything here anymore - 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," he wrote in a post on X in October.
During the St Patrick's Day visit to the White House by Taoiseach Micheál Martin on 12 March, US President Donald Trump said he did not want "to do anything to hurt Ireland" but added that the trade relationship between the countries should be focused on "fairness".
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 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.
Mr 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."
Yesterday a working paper by the Economic and Social Research Institute and the Department of Finance found Ireland's domestic economy could contract by 2% over the next five to seven years if US tariffs on EU goods are imposed.
The paper suggests traded sector, or the part of the economy which is dominated by exporters including pharmaceutical and technology companies, "is likely to be disproportionately impacted by these protectionist measures due to its strong linkages to the global economy."
