{"id":256411,"date":"2026-01-21T16:30:12","date_gmt":"2026-01-21T16:30:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/256411\/"},"modified":"2026-01-21T16:30:12","modified_gmt":"2026-01-21T16:30:12","slug":"the-eu-should-channel-michael-oleary-when-dealing-with-donald-trump-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/256411\/","title":{"rendered":"The EU should channel Michael O\u2019Leary when dealing with Donald Trump \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

There are many advantages to being the chief executive of the largest European customer of Boeing<\/a>. One of them is being able to call Donald Trump<\/a> a liar and face no consequences \u2013 as Ryanair<\/a>\u2019s Michael O\u2019Leary<\/a> did last week.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t have any faith or trust in Trump, who has proven himself to be again and again a liar,\u201d he told Politico, the US<\/a>-owned political news site. It\u2019s possible the US president and his staff are not aware of the comments, but it seems unlikely, given their obsession with social media and Trump\u2019s notoriously thin skin. <\/p>\n

Elon Musk<\/a> \u2013 Trump\u2019s erstwhile government efficiency tsar \u2013 certainly heard O\u2019Leary last week when he dissed the prospect of installing Musk\u2019s Starlink<\/a> satellite system on the airline\u2019s planes. O\u2019Leary said that installing antennas would cost the airline up to \u20ac215 million a year in extra fuel. <\/p>\n

Not so, claimed Musk on X<\/a>, casting doubt on Ryanair\u2019s ability to calculate additional fuel costs<\/a>. \u201cI would pay no attention whatsoever to Elon Musk … He\u2019s an idiot, very wealthy, but he\u2019s still an idiot,\u201d shot back O\u2019Leary.<\/p>\n

Insulting two of the world\u2019s most powerful men is not a bad week\u2019s work for O\u2019Leary, even by his own standards<\/a>. How did he get away with it? Because he can. Neither Trump nor Musk has any real leverage over him. The opposite is the case. <\/p>\n

Trump is doubtlessly aware of just how important Ryanair is to Boeing<\/a>, which has stumbled in recent years as concerns mounted over the safety of some of its planes. It now lags Airbus, its European rival. <\/p>\n

Ryanair says it has invested over $40 billion (\u20ac34 billion) in Boeing aircraft over the years, supporting over 30,000 US jobs. The airline has 300 Boeing 737 MAX aircraft on order for delivery over the next decade, assuming Ryanair takes up all its options. There is a firm order for 150 planes and options for 150 more. It takes a lot for Trump to bite his tongue, but that might be enough.<\/p>\n

Musk has an equally weak hand. Starlink sees airlines as an important market for its services, and landing Ryanair would be a significant coup. Ryanair says it just can\u2019t see customers paying for wifi on a one-hour flight. It\u2019s possible that O\u2019Leary is just negotiating. If he isn\u2019t, he should probably take a couple of flights with his teenage children. Either way, he holds the stronger cards.<\/p>\n

Musk has resorted to asking his X followers whether he should spend more than \u20ac30 billion buying Ryanair<\/a> \u2013 an airline he will not be allowed to control. <\/p>\n

There is an important read across from all of this for the European Union<\/a> as it grapples with how best to respond to Trump\u2019s latest threat: punitive tariffs on some members and the UK unless they play ball with his plans to take ownership of Greenland<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Appointing O\u2019Leary as the bloc\u2019s negotiator would be as entertaining as it is unlikely. But that is not the point. What O\u2019Leary has demonstrated to those who have not grasped it already is that in Trump\u2019s zero-sum world, the thing that counts is leverage. <\/p>\n

It is clear that Trump believes the ability to impose tariffs on the US\u2019s trading partners gives him enormous leverage. There is little that has happened over the last 12 months, never mind the last 48 hours, to make him think anything different. <\/p>\n

In reality, the EU has far more leverage over Trump than it appears to realise or be prepared to use. It negotiated a trade deal with Trump last year \u2013 that is now in jeopardy \u2013 with one arm tied behind its back. <\/p>\n

The trade surplus the US enjoys in services was not on the table, and neither was the EU\u2019s most powerful weapon \u2013 the anti-coercion instrument which allows for much more than retaliatory tariffs. It covers import quotas, access to public tenders, the services sector, investment and intellectual property rights. <\/p>\n

EU leaders meet on Thursday to discuss how to respond to the latest threat. Some, including France, favour using the anti-coercion bazooka. The Germans say they will go along with what everybody wants. We are equivocating as only we can, with T\u00e1naiste Simon Harris<\/a> calling for dialogue and cool heads.<\/p>\n

Europe\u2019s lack of unity is not surprising. The new sanctions will affect different members in different ways. There are also the risks of things spinning out of control that come with escalation. But if this effectively rules out the use of the EU\u2019s most powerful weapon, the negotiations are over before they start. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s worth remembering that what caused Trump to back down the last time was not the EU\u2019s emollient approach. It was the negative reaction of the US bond markets to an impending trade war with its biggest group of lenders \u2013 the EU \u2013 and what that meant for the solvency of the US government. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s time to put the bazooka on the table.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There are many advantages to being the chief executive of the largest European customer of Boeing. One of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":256412,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[12495,72,969,605,2244,3024,61,60,10726,1899,70,1390,90,606],"class_list":{"0":"post-256411","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-boeing","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-donald-trump","11":"tag-elon-musk","12":"tag-eu","13":"tag-greenland","14":"tag-ie","15":"tag-ireland","16":"tag-michael-oleary","17":"tag-ryanair","18":"tag-simon-harris","19":"tag-starlink","20":"tag-us","21":"tag-x"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=256411"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256411\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/256412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=256411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=256411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=256411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}