Irish central bank chief: Dublin must spend less or tax more

(Geoffrey Smith – Politico) U.S. President Donald Trump’s assault on global trade is threatening Ireland’s golden age of low taxes and high spending — and Dublin has to decide which one it values more. Ireland has ridden wave after wave of foreign investment in recent years. U.S. technology and pharma companies in particular have piled in to take advantage of its well-educated, English-speaking workforce and — crucially — one of the lowest corporate tax rates in the developed world. But that has made its public finances — the envy of the EU after six budget surpluses in the last eight years — critically dependent on a handful of multinationals. And like every other critical dependency in today’s world, the corporate tax windfall is now coming in for more thorough scrutiny. – Irish central bank chief: Dublin must spend less or tax more – POLITICO