Ahead of the annual Saint Patrick’s Day gab fest, in which the head of the Irish state gets face time with the leader of the free world, Irish economist and commentator David McWilliams writes an article trying to alert his countrymen to their dangerous dependence on us. He titles it “American Money Is Destroying the Irish Economy from the Inside.”

While Americans get thinner from Mounjaro, the maker of the drug is fattening Irish tax receipts.

In 2025, Lilly paid a whopping $6.6 billion in taxes to Ireland. In contrast, this American flagship pharma giant paid only $3.3 billion in taxes to its home country. Ireland, a foreign country with a population of a just over five million, received roughly two times more tax income than the US, the home country with a population of 340 million. It’s not so much America First as America Last.

In 2025, Lilly paid a whopping $6.6 billion in taxes to Ireland. In contrast, this American flagship pharma giant paid only $3.3 billion in taxes to its home country. Ireland, a foreign country with a population of a just over five million, received roughly two times more tax income than the US, the home country with a population of 340 million. It’s not so much America First as America Last.

The numbers are truly eye-popping:

With millions signing up, in commercial terms, Mounjaro is a gold mine. Lilly reported $22.965 billion of Mounjaro revenue and $13.542 billion of Zepbound revenue in 2025. That’s $36.5 billion combined, or 56 per cent of Lilly’s total 2025 revenue. This money, despite being mostly paid by customers living in the US, is being funnelled through Ireland largely because Lilly manufactures the active ingredients for Mounjaro and Zepbound in Kinsale and ships them to the US for further processing. By channelling the revenue back to Ireland, the American company saves on tax, and in turn throws off a revenue windfall for the Irish exchequer. So far, so clever.

With millions signing up, in commercial terms, Mounjaro is a gold mine. Lilly reported $22.965 billion of Mounjaro revenue and $13.542 billion of Zepbound revenue in 2025. That’s $36.5 billion combined, or 56 per cent of Lilly’s total 2025 revenue.

This money, despite being mostly paid by customers living in the US, is being funnelled through Ireland largely because Lilly manufactures the active ingredients for Mounjaro and Zepbound in Kinsale and ships them to the US for further processing. By channelling the revenue back to Ireland, the American company saves on tax, and in turn throws off a revenue windfall for the Irish exchequer. So far, so clever.

But this ultimately hurts the Irish native economy, McWilliams argues. Just three American multinationals account for 46 percent of the entire country’s corporate tax intake. The weight of these companies in the entire ecosystem forbids the development of diverse native businesses at any number of sizes, while making the government extremely vulnerable to a crash if any one of these companies decides to respond to tariff incentives by relocating, whether to America or Denmark. Replacing even one of the big three would require the development of thousands of unusually successful native firms. He goes so far as to compare Irish dependence on these multinationals to its previous dependence on the potato crop.

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