• Questions were raised in the Assembly about NI’s trade with the USA in light of  President Trump’s announcements about tariffs.
  • In 2024, NI exported £1.68bn in goods to the USA, while £752m travelled the opposite direction.
  • That £1.68bn comprised around 11% of NI’s total goods exported outside the UK for the year (£7bn was exported to the EU in the same period)).

In response to an oral question in the Assembly on 28 April regarding the implementation of tariffs on international trade being set in the USA, First Minister Michelle O’Neill MLA said:

“The US is an important trading partner for us. In 2024, alone, we exported £1.7 billion of goods to the US and imported £750 million of goods.”

This claim is supported by evidence.

Trade figures for the fourth quarter of 2024 were recently published by HMRC, completing the data for that year. In total, Northern Ireland exported £1.68bn in goods to the USA while £752m in goods travelled the opposite direction.

The First Minister was responding to questions from MLAs Diane Dodds (DUP) and Robbie Butler (UUP) about the possible impact of tariffs announced by the President of the United States of America in recent months.

For more information on Northern Ireland’s trading picture for 2024, read on.

  • Source

FactCheckNI contacted the First Minister about this claim but, at the time of writing, had received no response.

  • Trade figures

HMRC publishes trade information covering the UK’s nations and regions. Figures for Q4 2024 were released in March 2025, allowing data for the full year of 2024 to be analysed.

Trading data on imports and exports is broken down by Standard International Trade Classification (SITC) codes, which allow goods to be categorised – using high level SITC1 codes and more detailed lower level SITC2 codes.

For 2024, Northern Ireland’s imports and exports from and to the United States, broken down by SITC1 code, were as follows:

Exports (000s)Imports (000s)
0 – Food & live animals£ 18,246£ 10,698
1 – Beverages & tobacco£ 90,434£ 3,868
2 – Crude materials, inedible, except fuels£ 873£ 7,321
3 – Mineral fuels, lubricants & related materials£ 8,516£ 3,255
4 – Animal & vegetable oils, fats & waxes£ 1£ 13
5 – Chemicals & related products, nes (not elsewhere specified)£ 492,114£ 113,492
6 – Manufactured goods classified chiefly by material£ 44,198£ 61,031
7 – Machinery & transport equipment£ 738,406£ 403,047
8 – Miscellaneous manufactured articles£ 285,690£ 150,055
9 – Commodities/transactions not class’d elsewhere in SITC£ 32
Total£ 1,678,510£ 752,780

Figure 1 – source: UK trade data

These figures support the claim that, in 2024, NI exported £1.7bn goods to the USA, more than double what was  imported (£750m) in the other direction.

This completes the fact check but, for a bit more context, read on.

  • Closer look

In 2024, exports to the United States comprised 15% of the total international (ie, outside UK) exports from Northern Ireland of £11.1 billion.

As a single country, the United States was the second largest international destination for Northern Ireland exports, behind cross border sales to the Republic of Ireland (worth £4.4bn in 2024). While the EU isn’t a single country, exports from NI to EU in 2024 (around £7bn) far exceeded all the other (non-EU) export destinations (£4bn).

Looking again at exports to the US in more detail, analysing at a SITC2 level gives more detailed information on the types of goods that Northern Ireland exports to the United States. From 2013 to 2024, 85% of exports by value were from one of seven categories:

  • Medicinal and pharmaceutical products, which accounted for 30% of exports over the period.
  • Machinery specialized for particular industries refers to machinery intended for industrial use such as agriculture, mining, food processing or construction; these represented 17% of exports over this time.
  • Furniture & parts thereof; bedding, mattresses etc came to 11% of goods exports over the period.
  • Other transport equipment – comprised of vehicle exports excluding cars, and can include aircraft and parts for aircraft and shipbuilding (9%).
  • Professional, scientific & controlling instruments & apparatus n.e.s. (not elsewhere specified) including exports of medical diagnostic devices and laboratory instruments (7%).
  • Beverages including alcoholic drinks such as whiskey (6%).
  • General industrial machinery & equipment & machine parts n.e.s. (5%).

All other categories of goods account for 15% of exports over this time. The following chart shows how total exports in different categories varied between 2013 and 2024:

Figure 2 – source: UK trading data.

In terms of imports from the United States, the largest SITC2 categories in 2024 were:

  • Electrical machinery, apparatus & appliances & electrical parts thereof n.e.s. (£110m, 15% of US imports in 2024), a broad category that covers electrical equipment not otherwise classified.
  • Power generating machinery & equipment (£77m, 10% of US imports in 2024)
  • Furniture & parts thereof; bedding, mattresses etc (£71m, 9% of US imports in 2024)
  • Plastics in primary forms (£63m, 8%)
  • Professional, scientific & controlling instruments & apparatus n.e.s. (£59m, 8%)