Stripe is essentially the backbone of the financial internet. 

In 2024, the company processed $1.4 trillion of payments on behalf of its clients, a sharp 40 per cent rise on the year before and a figure that equates to one per cent of global GDP.

It’s a phenomenal number and helps explain why, based on new analysis by Caplight, a data provider, the company is now valued at $94.4 billion (€83 billion). 

By way of context, that valuation is just shy of the $95 billion Stripe was valued at in March 2021 during the pandemic and ahead of the cost-of-living crisis and various geopolitical crises. 

The company is a global juggernaut, and one that gives it serious insight into the movement of goods, services and transactions. 

Last week, as US President Donald Trump escalated his trade war before pulling back from the brink, I sat down with John Collison, the Limerick entrepreneur who co-founded Stripe with his brother Patrick in 2010. 

First, Collison gave me a tour of Weston Airport, a 240-acre facility that he purchased, along with other investors, in 2021. I wrote about his plans for the airport and his views on aviation in Ireland on Saturday. 

Later in the day, I conducted a public interview with Collison at a Kildare Chamber of Commerce event at the K Club. The full interview will appear on The Currency in the coming days, but one of the first questions I asked him was about Trump, trade, and tariffs.

After all, he runs one of the world’s valuable private businesses, operates in the finance and technology space, and has serious insights into consumer behaviour.  

While many tech entrepreneurs have, sadly, become enamoured with Trump, bending the knee to his proposed new world order, Collison was thoughtful and critical.

“It’s a rare bipartisan issue where both Democrats and Republicans think it’s a bad idea. And apparently some current members of the administration do, too – like you’ve Elon off tweeting about it,” he told me. 

“All stock markets around the world have reflected how they feel the economic impact is of it. Many people, not just industry experts, not just people in President Trump’s own party, not just people in President Trump’s own administration, have said they think it’s a bad idea. 

“But here we are. And so, I haven’t checked my phone in the last half hour, so I don’t know what the latest is. But we shall see. It’s unfortunate.”

Not much had changed in the previous 30 minutes, but much changed later in the day when Trump announced his 90-day pause on many of his tariffs.

So, what happened? And what happens next?

90 consequential days ahead

The bond markets essentially brought Trump’s imperial ambitions to heel. That much is clear. The guardrails that usually rein in policies, such as the stock market, did not block his ambitions. The bond markets did. 

There is now a reprieve. 

The next 90 days will be consequential for the global economy. The Trump administration will rapidly begin searching for agreements. It can tout this as a success, perhaps. Yet, many of these will be not worth the paper they are written on. 

The goal for the European Union, and, by extension, Ireland is to craft the corridor of negotiations to ensure a fuller trade agreement between the world’s largest trading blocs can be reached. 

There is no doubt now that the Trump administration has no grand strategy. It has no grand ambition beyond its own ambition. It has no ability to implement that ambition beyond the sheer might of the United States economy. 

It is engaged in the shrinking of that economy; two or three per cent of the United States’ gross domestic product will be undone by the imposition of tariffs. 

The most likely outcome is, therefore, a stagflation where US consumers, already hurt by years of inflation, are served with more inflation by the man who said he would make inflation go away.

The implications for Ireland are unclear. Private investment will almost certainly shrink over the coming months as investors pull their horns.  Despite global turmoil, Ireland’s dealmaking scene has kicked off 2025 with a confident stride. In the first quarter alone, there was a 39 per cent jump in the volume of M&As from the same period last year, according to the latest report by the Irish private equity firm Renatus.

However, as Michael will report from London in the coming days, some of the PE investors active in Ireland are beginning to feel the pressure of uncertainty. The decision by Australian finance giant Macquarie to pull the plug on the Sceirde Rocks offshore wind farm, which Alice revealed on Friday, may have to do with the physical conditions off the coast of Co Galway, but it comes off the back of global retrenchment by the multinational’s offshore developer Corio Generation.

The overall structure of the Irish economy, its basic tax relations, and its basic multinational set-up, have not materially changed. What has changed is the noise around them. As any finance minister knows, you can’t spend noise.

To my mind, the core point is this: The EU now has the impetus to structure a corridor of talks that will result in some limited concessions for Trump that he can claim as a win and also help the EU reduce the tariffs to around 10 per cent. As one government aide told me: “That floor likely won’t change.”

Meanwhile, the EU and China will move closer together on sector issues. 

Trying to make sense of everything going on is pointless. There is no sense. As Colm put it on Thursday, Trump’s new American unilateralism goes further than just tariffs. One case in point is climate policy, where the US pull-back is removing incentives for other regions of the world to compete on environmental performance. This is translating into the EU’s initiative to “stop the clock” on new corporate reporting requirements – Tara teased out the implications for companies on Wednesday.

Nothing might have changed in the 30 minutes before John Collison, one of the world’s richest men, last checked his phone when we sat on Wednesday. But everything changed in the hours right afterwards. 

“I feel like I have nothing new to say about the topic because so much has been said,” he told me. 

It is hard to disagree.

*****

Elsewhere last week, Sarah Keane has spent a significant amount of time thinking about trust, governance and accountability in Irish sports, and within the organisations that manage them. Part of it stems from her legal background. Part also relates to her work overhauling the crisis-ridden Olympic Federation of Ireland during her time as president of the organisation and from her day job as chief executive of Swim Ireland. I caught up with her for our latest instalment of the Sports Matters podcast series. 

Covidien, a multinational acquired by Medtronic, twice won the right to deduct Vat through a structure allowing its Irish headquarters to rent its CEO from a US subsidiary. The Court of Appeal has now overturned previous decisions. Thomas had the back story.

Rory King didn’t buy his audience, he earned it. The accidental founder talked to Andrea about how authenticity, community building, and guerrilla tactics fuelled one of Ireland’s fastest-growing travel brands before putting a cent into paid media.

Each March, the population of Bologna in Italy swells by over a quarter of a million visitors who make their way to the BolognaFiere exhibition centre for Cosmoprof, one of the world’s largest beauty trade shows. Ruth O’Connor visited the event and spoke to the Irish contingent there.