Gavan Reilly in the Oval Office: Micheál Martin may have escaped without a scolding, but that doesn't mean there's not trouble ahead for Ireland

So. Where to start?

Micheál Martin didn’t get a mauling; there was no aggressive commentary from Donald Trump telling us we’re awful rapscallions, and certainly no shouting match. That was an outside fear of the travelling delegation: if the U.S. President is in the mood to shout people down, he could ostensibly find quite a few things to shout to the Taoiseach about.

In hindsight this always seemed a bit fanciful. If the White House is going to become a bear pit where visiting leaders go to get shouted at, Trump won’t get terribly far. There certainly wouldn’t be an international queue of leaders lining up to the Oval Office if it feels more like an Octagon.

But, I fear, any labelling of the visit as a ‘success’ for the visiting Taoiseach is a bit premature – and in truth a bit misguided too.

Park the fears about Micheál Martin getting a Zelenskyy-style beatdown from Donald Trump and JD Vance. The plain fact is that, had Zelenskyy not been shouted at so viciously two weeks ago, Martin’s encounter would be assessed on a far different benchmark.

One point worth making is that Trump and Martin only had an hour of allotted time, and 51 minutes of it played out in front of the cameras. When the media left, there was barely ten minutes left for any hard truths to be exchanged behind the scenes - basically, what you saw on telly, was the meeting.

Yes, there were points of difference aired in the Oval Office, and the Taoiseach did so with clarity and (for some topics) bravery. When Donald Trump talked about Ireland ‘stealing’ American pharmaceutical companies, Martin assertively said that the likes of Eli Lilly have flourished thanks to fifty years of investment in Ireland. When the President grumbled about Ireland having an immense trade surplus, the Taoiseach interjected to point out that Ryanair and Aercap (an aircraft leasing company) are the biggest overseas purchasers of Boeing aircraft anywhere on Planet Earth.

Grand, and on those topics, the Taoiseach warrants praise for being visible and calm in asserting Ireland’s differing position (though his stopping short of quibbling over plans to redevelop Gaza is a separate matter). But the President didn’t appear to be in listening mode at all: it was instead a case of, ‘Fine, that’s your view; here’s what I think, and I’m right.’

There’s the old proverb about leading a horse to water, and all that, but subtract the tone and look plainly at what Donald Trump had to say. Time and time again, while not detracting Ireland for being opportunistic, the President was clear in his view that Ireland had “stolen” American jobs and taxes. And while he doesn’t want to do anything to harm or hurt Ireland, he still intends to get those jobs and companies home.

If he does that, intended or not, Ireland will be collateral damage. Mention of the pharmaceutical sector is an important one: that’s an area that could be crucified by the tariffs that Trump clearly has an appetite to pursue. Manufacturing plants can’t be uprooted overnight but if one of their biggest markets is being pulled away, wouldn’t they naturally downsize their Irish operation and shift some manufacturing back to America?

Moreover, if Trump remains keen to entice American firms back with tax incentives, pharma is low-hanging fruit. Many of the drug companies ‘headquartered’ in Ireland don’t have much more than a brass plaque, and the vast majority of their manufacturing is actually done in the U.S. anyway. Encourage them to move the brass plaque back to America and suddenly a lot of corporate tax revenues don’t arrive in Paschal Donohoe and Jack Chambers’ coffers.

That’s to say nothing of how relatively easy it might be, administratively at least, for the intellectual property housed in Ireland to be on-shored back in the U.S. so that global advertisers taking out ads through Google, for example, are paying an American firm and not an Irish one.

Trump says he doesn’t want to hurt Ireland – and he’s not going to be vindictive for the sake of it – but if he pursues what he wants, the clear message from the Oval Office is that we’re in trouble.

Micheál Martin escaping without a scolding is all well and good, but if things turn south soon, nobody can’t say we weren’t warned.