Ambassador Edward Walsh made the comments yesterday, to a high-powered audience of Irish and US executives at the American Chamber of Commerce Ireland’s (AmCham) Global Business Conference. The Chamber represents many of Ireland’s biggest employers.
“This uncertainty word is something that I guess everybody uses it, I’m getting annoyed at the word. I’m realising that it’s really a political word,” ambassador Walsh told the audience.
He said senior business executives are not reacting to day-to-day headlines.
“If you listen to the main CEOs, they don’t use that word, they’re always looking forward. And almost every one of them said, I don’t pay attention to the little noise that’s going on,” he said.
“There’s always going to be issues, and they’re always looking how to solve a problem. So I think that stuff is more just politicians talking and then talking to a few people or something,” he added.
“As a CEO running a company, you would never walk into a town hall meeting and say, Oh, my God, people such uncertain times, what are we going to do?”
His comments come as the decision by the US Supreme Court to strike down president Donald Trump’s tariffs announced last Friday triggered a renewed bout of confusion, with the White House moving to reimpose new tariffs through this week and raising question of when and how already paid tariffs will be refunded.
US multinationals, including a large number of American Chamber of Commerce members, now employ 245,000 people in Ireland.
Irish businesses, in turn, are the fifth largest source of foreign direct investment into the US, AmCham said.
A survey of AmCham’s Irish members found nine in 10 US multinational companies operating in Ireland view the country positively as an investment location while 95pc said they would choose Ireland again if making their first investment decision in Europe.
The survey also highlighted risks, with tariffs ranked as the fourth greatest risk to foreign direct investment over the next five years, behind the availability of skilled talent (24pc), housing (16pc) and changes to global tax policy or trade agreements (16pc).