The one thing that we can be sure about since Trump announced his “Liberation Day” tariffs and the numerous rounds of talks and threats since, is that trade uncertainty has massively increased for anyone who is exporting to the US.

For Irish agricultural exporters, the time of year means that it would have been difficult to meet extra customer demand for perishable products, if it had arisen. However, for many other goods exporters to the US, including Irish pharmaceutical companies, there would have been some ability to ramp up production and increase shipments across the Atlantic.

From the graph below we can see two things. First, that Donald Trump is right that Europe has consistently had a large trade surplus with the US, where exports to North America are significantly and persistently larger than EU imports from the US.

That surplus reached €236bn in the 12 months to the end of March 2025.

EU exports

The second thing that really stands out from the chart is the huge increase in EU exports to the US in the first few months of 2025, with by far the largest monthly total in the dataset being hit in March of this year.

The sole driver of that increase has been US companies increasing their orders from EU suppliers in order to avoid the possibility of having to pay significantly more in future due to the imposition of tariffs.

There is a cost to these companies in stockpiling goods now, but there is also a threat to EU exporters as they will have ramped up production to meet the increase in orders, and are now likely to see a fall off in demand as their US customers work through the stockpiles they’ve build up.