No Less Than A Call to Patriotic Action

Analysis of the Simon Harris Op-ed in today's Irish Times

Writing in the Irish Times today, Simon Harris argues that “Ireland has no time to waste” before launching “an all-out diplomatic and trade offensive in the United States.”

The outgoing Taoiseach and incoming Tánaiste are, of course, entirely correct. The Trump administration will almost certainly pursue protectionist measures that will attack key elements of the globalised economic model that underpins the source of Ireland’s critical revenue streams. Arch proponents of tariffs like Robert Lighthizer and Howard Lutnick will have strong sway in the new administration’s trade policy. Their negative view of the “double Irish” and its contemporary iterations have been made abundantly clear. The stakes couldn’t possibly be higher for Ireland’s economy.

It’s also politically wise for Harris to attach himself to this file now. He needs to move on definitively from a comme ci, comme ça election campaign and identify a clear goal for himself that can reset the political narrative.

Ultimately, the jury is still somewhat out as to whether Harris rescued Fine Gael from the shellacking they were headed toward under a tired Leo Varadkar or if he blew a halftime 3-0 lead by assuming his “new energy” alone could hold onto the Taoiseach’s office for the party. These things take considered reflection in the fullness of time. But your present scribe has yet to find such time between indulging in fine stouts for the Christmas season and an unfolding slow-motion political collapse in Canada, where I currently live.

Nonetheless, Harris decidedly popping his head above the parapet to stake a claim on what could be a defining foreign policy challenge is noteworthy. A canny political mind, Harris will no doubt have observed the hay Micheál Martin was able to make as Minister for Foreign Affairs in the latter half of the outgoing coalition government.

The worst-case scenario in tackling a protectionist Trump administration is nearly unfathomably bad for Ireland. Equally so, if the Team Ireland “diplomatic and trade offensive” proposed by Harris can navigate us out of the choppy waters ahead, the political rewards will be extremely lucrative. Politicians love nothing more than a little spot of pursuing enlightened self-interest: what’s good for me is good for us, and the right thing to do to boot.

Under the first Trump administration, Canada successfully managed a potentially disastrous renegotiation of NAFTA by working back channels at the state level and through favourable relations with grizzled Republican insiders from governments gone by who didn’t share the Trumpist hostility to free trade.

Notably, the Trudeau government made extensive use of former Progressive Conservative Prime Minister (and great Irish Canadian) Brian Mulroney’s contacts with Reagan-era GOP mandarins and heavyweights to pull strings in Canada’s favour where possible. I suspect Harris, soon to be occupying the top job in the DFA by all accounts, has already had an informal briefing or two from the team in Ottawa about where, how, and why that was successfully pulled off back in 2017-18.

Today, Canada’s woes on the Trump file are both more serious and yet utterly absurd. The government is in freefall as the deeply unpopular Justin Trudeau clings to power amidst a looming 25% tariff threat from Trump and now regular jibes on social media that annexation to the US (a primordial fear that formed a huge motivation for the creation of the dominion of Canada in 1867) is imminent. Impossible to know what to make of the seemingly ludicrous latter threat, establishment figures are paralysed and nascent members of the trans-national right-wing Trump cult line up to lick the boot. It’s beyond disheartening.

It is both good politics and good policy for Simon Harris to sound the alarm for the necessity of, in the words of the late Brian Lenihan, “no less than a call to patriotic action” as Ireland stares down an existential threat to our economic model. However, as Canada shows, it could be a lot worse. Thank God for small mercies and all that.