IRISH EXPORTS TO the United States fell dramatically in the first six months of this year compared to the same period in 2025, according to provisional data released by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) today.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Between January and June this year, overall goods exports dropped by 30.5% compared to the same six months in 2025, representing a reduction worth \u20ac45.4 billion.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Exports of goods to the US alone fell by 65.1%, a drop worth \u20ac48.9 billion, in the first six months of 2026 compared to January to June 2025.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Economic analysts have put this huge reduction down to US trade policies introduced by president Donald Trump, specifically tariffs.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Ahead of the imposition of Trump\u2019s first round of tariffs in early 2025, importers in the US scrambled to get ahead of the charges and stock up on extra goods.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This led to a large spike in demand for goods and, therefore, an increase in exports from Ireland to the US.\u00a0<\/p>\n
At the same time, exports to the United Kingdom increased by 42.6% over the same period, from \u20ac7.2 billion to \u20ac10.3 billion.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Despite the general downward trend in the first half of 2026, exports in June of this year actually saw an increase of 7.1%,\u00a0compared to the same month in 2025, reaching a total of\u00a0\u20ac18.1 billion.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Imports, meanwhile, increased in June and in the first six months of the year.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Imports rose by 19% to \u20ac14.7 billion this past June compared to June 2026, while they increased by 12.5% to \u20ac79.1 billion in the first six months of this year.<\/p>\n
Janette Maxwell of Grant Thornton Ireland, a professional services firm, said that the trade data from June presented \u201ca mixed picture\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n
She said that, on a monthly basis, \u201cboth exports and imports recorded strong growth\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cPutting things into context, however, another story also emerges.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile June was a strong month, it wasn\u2019t enough to offset weaker performance earlier in the year, highlighting the volatility that can arise within Ireland\u2019s highly internationalised trading economy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Maxwell added that, given the importance of the US market, \u201cparticularly for high-value sectors such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals, and advanced manufacturing, changes of this scale can have a substantial impact on overall trade performance\u201d.<\/p>\n
She said the figures also underlined \u201cthe extent to which Ireland\u2019s aggregate export data can be influenced by a relatively small number of multinational-driven industries and markets\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Carol Lynch, a customs and international trade specialist with accountancy firm BDO, said Ireland\u2019s export performance \u201ccontinues to demonstrate resilience and diversification in the face of difficult geopolitical factors and ongoing changes in US tariff rules\u201d.<\/p>\n
She also noted that the decline in exports to the US was \u201cto be expected following last year\u2019s stockpiling in the early months\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are now seeing some normalisation and it is very positive that exports generally increased in June 2026 compared to June 2025,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"IRISH EXPORTS TO the United States fell dramatically in the first six months of this year compared to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":643804,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[174],"tags":[79,28463,356,179,18,10170,19,31763,17,272455,1255,107],"class_list":["post-643803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-cso","tag-donald-trump","tag-economy","tag-eire","tag-exports","tag-ie","tag-imports","tag-ireland","tag-stockpiling","tag-tariffs","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117117227354555900","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643803","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=643803"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643803\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/643804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=643803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=643803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=643803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}