Irish prime minister faces balancing act at talks with Trump

By Padraic Halpin

DUBLIN (Reuters) - Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin faces a diplomatic balancing act during talks with Donald Trump on Wednesday, with Ireland among the countries most vulnerable to the U.S. president's economic plans.

The annual White House meeting to mark St Patrick's Day is usually relatively straightforward for the country of 5.4 million, symbolised since the 1950s by the gifting of a bowl of shamrock to the president in the Oval Office.

Recent meetings were with Trump's proudly Irish-American predecessor Joe Biden. This year's meeting with Trump entails more uncertainty, with many Irish jobs, tax revenue and exports directly dependent on a cluster of U.S. multinational firms.

"I am very, very conscious that in a very challenging world, thousands and thousands of jobs depend on the economic relationship between the United States and Ireland," Martin, who plans to highlight the 115,000 people Irish firms employ in the U.S., said at the start of the six-day trip marking the March 17 holiday for Ireland's patron saint.

U.S. firms have operated in Ireland for decades, attracted in large part by its low corporate tax rate. The mainly U.S.-owned foreign multinational workforce totals 302,000, or 11% of all workers, and they contribute most of a corporate tax take that has handed Ireland large budget surpluses.

Top of Irish concerns is whether Trump will focus on the U.S. goods trade deficit with Ireland, driven by drugs and pharmaceutical ingredients made in the European Union member state by U.S companies that are exported back to the U.S.

The world's 10 largest drugmakers, including Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer and Merck, have large plants in Ireland.

Ireland's Central Statistics Office said the deficit was a record 50 billion euros ($54.2 billion) last year. Using a different measure, the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis put it at $87 billion, ahead of Canada and Germany and behind only Vietnam, Mexico and China.

The U.S. has a large surplus in services trade with Ireland, as with the EU as a whole.

Trump has threatened a 25% tariff on pharmaceutical imports and on goods from the EU, both of which would catch Ireland in its crosshairs. He also made an election pledge to slash the U.S. corporate tax rate to the top Irish rate of 15%, which would be even more damaging.

Martin will be the first EU leader to visit the Oval Office since Trump's explosive meeting there with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. As Ireland was one of three European countries that last year officially recognised a Palestinian state, Martin could also faces a balancing act when discussing the Middle East.

($1 = 0.9228 euros)

(Reporting by Padraic Halpin, Editing by Timothy Heritage)