Smurfit WestRock CEO Tony Smurfit has described Donald Trump’s import tariffs as “economic suicide for America” as he discusses their potentially “damaging” impact on the paper packaging trade and Ireland’s economic relations with the US.
As of March 2025, President Trump has imposed a 25% tariff on various imports from the European Union – a measure feared to have particular repercussions for Ireland, with ING reporting that US exports constitute 10.1% of its GDP (compared to the EU’s overall export exposure of 2.9% of GDP).
Speaking on The Irish Times’ Inside Business podcast with host Ciarán Hancock, Smurfit describes these tariffs as “very damaging” and a “really bad thing for America and for the rest of the world”.
He notes the “direct effects” of Trump’s tariffs on Smurfit WestRock’s trade between America and Mexico, as well as its Canadian mill, which reportedly employs between 3,000 and 4,000 workers.
“Our Canadian mill will be at risk because it’s a large mill that sells most of its product into the United States, and it’s a commodity product,” he explains. “Therefore, if you had a tariff on paper going into the US [that makes it] 25% more expensive on a commodity, it’s just not going to work.
“There [are] paper products that go from America into Canada so there will probably be a countervailing tariff that would maybe mitigate that. We’ll obviously work on that and see how it all plays out. It’s so much up in the air at the moment.
“There are businesses that will be put at risk, but how long do you live with those businesses while they make losses? Depends how long the tariffs go on for. There’s no way to put an accurate figure on it.”
Nevertheless, he considers the impact on the mill “minor to the effect of American consumer confidence, to electricity being shut off in northern New York and places like that, which Canada has threatened to do”.
Hancock goes on to ask Smurfit about the impact of tariffs on Smurfit Kappa’s packaging production for the pharmaceutical industry. According to The Guardian, Irish big pharma exports €72 billion worth of goods to the United States every year, with taxes paid in Ireland on products consumed in America.
Smurfit clarifies that tariffs could cause “potential hits everywhere”, from food packaging in Italy to champagne packaging in France – “but at the end of the day, we supply products that people want and need, so the only thing is going to be, what’s the demand destruction based on the tariffs and that’s something nobody can predict.”
“I believe reason will prevail at the end of this,” he continues. “I did not actually think when Trump got elected that he would go ahead with the tariffs, because I thought that would just be economic suicide for America. But obviously, the consequence for the rest of the world is there.”
He adds that Taoiseach Micheál Martin will “have to dance quite a fine line” in negotiations with America “because there are other things that Donald Trump doesn’t like about Ireland”. Nevertheless, he emphasizes that Martin has “got to protect” both Irish businesses operating in America, and American businesses operating in Ireland.
Martin has since described the relationship between the US and Ireland as a “two-way street”, with more than 700 Irish companies thought to create over 200,000 jobs in America. However, he describes tariffs as “damaging to trade, damaging to businesses, but also damaging to consumers”.
“So, we would hope that in the fullness of time that these things will settle down and that there would be negotiation, trade negotiations, to arrive at a landing zone that people can cope with and can accommodate,” he says.
It was recently revealed that the US would place 25% tariffs on imports of steel, aluminium, and products containing either of the two metals. The European Commission responded by reintroduccing suspended counter-tariffs and introducing new countermeasures to the ‘unjustified’ restrictions.
In similar commentary, Coca-Cola’s chief executive James Quincey said in an earnings call that the company may have to revert to plastic bottles if the aluminium tariff became too expensive; however, he also discouraged others from “exaggerating the impact” of these tariffs on a multinational corporation.
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