Trump’s tariffs have thrown economists into panic.
What did we learn from the 2008 crash? When there’s economic turmoil, the rich always try and make working-class people pay.
But there’s enough wealth there to protect ordinary people from any economic turbulence.
The Irish Government has billions in surplus. The British Government has 165 billionaires they could tax. These are billionaires whose wealth surged three times faster in 2024.
Working-class communities, like the ones People Before Profit represent, paid for the bank bailouts. We must not pay for Trump’s Tariffs. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael created an economic model in this country that has gutted us of our self-sustainability, reduced the state to the bare minimum, and hoped that the tax-haven model would hold up indefinitely. Ireland needs to be more self-sustaining and independent so that when men like Trump try their gunboat financial politics, we can weather the storm and insulate the people of this country from its effects. How do we do that?
Let's shift away from the for-profit model. Let's massively expand worker-owned and publicly owned enterprises. Let's make that the norm. You produce the value: you receive the benefit. Real people with a vested interest in Ireland can actually benefit instead of faceless billionaires—or billionaires you maybe wish were more faceless.
At a glance we could achieve real change that directly improves the lives of ordinary people:
1. Ireland should have complete control over its natural resources.
2. Energy should be re-nationalised—what was plundered during the crash should be taken back. But we should go further and lead the way in the renewable revolution. That means publicly owned infrastructure for wind, solar, and tidal power—built for public benefit, not private profit.
3. We should invest in publicly owned enterprises. No price-gouging, no billionaires profiting off wealth stolen from workers.
4. The state needs to start building itself. That means investing in education, apprenticeships and developing the LDA into a real state construction company.
5. The tax-haven model has temporarily bought Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael some time but their plan was never sound and would always come under existential pressure.
The choices ahead of us are straightforward - we can change course or we can expect austerity and more of the same. People Before Profit is and always will be about system change, rooting power in our communities, and building a rational economy that works for ordinary people instead of the chaos and inequality that capitalism pushes.