US now in a difficult situation, former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg tells Dublin audience

"America has spent the last 70 years trying to build relationships with other countries – and we benefit, and those other countries all benefit, and here we’re throwing away a lot of that, which I can’t explain,” he said at an event to mark the opening of a new Bloomberg office on Charlemont Street in Dublin.

"But that’s what the [US] administration is doing, and I was not a supporter of this administration, although I’ve known Donald Trump for 30-40 years. When I was mayor of New York he was a real estate developer in the city, and only went bankrupt six times.”

Mr Bloomberg said he’d had a cordial relationship with the now US president, who he described as a “pleasant guy”.

“If you sat and had dinner with him, you’d walk away saying ‘yeah, I had a good time’. Having said that, I don’t agree with his policies at all.”

The businessman stressed, however, that he is careful to ensure that Bloomberg news service has the same number of conservatives and liberals on its editorial staff. He has not visited the White House, as he doesn’t want anybody to say that “we’re kissing the ring”.

Mr Bloomberg said he wanted his news service to stay totally neutral. “Because I think that’s what our customers want, and that’s what the world deserves from a news organisation.”

Bloomberg is glad to be an investor in Ireland, its founder added. “We have 150 people in our office here now, and it’s growing. We’re looking for another 25 people, probably mostly in engineering.”

Today's news in 90 Seconds - Monday June 23

Commenting on Ireland’s recent economic success, he said that the country had benefited from Brexit, which he described as “the single stupidest thing any country has ever done, and it’s hard to believe how they did it”.

Also speaking at the Bloomberg event, Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe said there were economic risks arising from the war in the Middle East. “The first one is what could happen from an energy and trade perspective – the price of energy, and the ability of access for goods moving around the world,” he said.

“Exactly at the moment at which global sentiment with regard to trade is already in a low place, an event like this creates a further risk.”

He said that macroeconomic modelling the Department of Finance has done on the impact of tariffs indicated that about 75,000 jobs could be affected in the medium term, with up to 25,000 of those affected next year.

“From a growth perspective, there could be one to one-and-a-half points of growth that we can lose across the medium term,” he said.

Asked if this autumn’s Budget would be his most difficult yet, Mr Donohoe said the most difficult he had ever done was the first during Covid.

“I really feared we were on the precipice of profound change. There was a need to inject demand and confidence into our economy while not knowing what the macroeconomic or funding environment would be like,” he said. “That was, to date, the hardest set of decision I’ve ever had to make.

“The next Budget will be difficult, like they all are, but please God we’ll never have to confront a set of choices in such an atmosphere of uncertainty.”