Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What are the main business headlines discussed today?
Breakfast Business with Enterprise Ireland on Newstalk. Good morning and welcome to Breakfast Business and thank you to Shane Beattie. It is Wednesday, the 3rd of December at 6.31. Coming up on today's show, we'll be talking to the online media regulator, about the case against the social media giants, TikTok and LinkedIn.
And we'll be looking at whether China is actually de-globalising by radically cutting its imports and all the markets as usual. You can email us business at newstalk.com.
Chapter 2: How is Ireland's net wealth expected to change in the next decade?
But first, let's have a look at the main business stories in the newspapers and websites. Kathleen Gallagher in the Business Post reports that net wealth in Ireland is expected to double to 2.6 trillion over the next 10 years, according to a new report from Davie.
While the research forecasts a continuation of the boom in Irish household wealth over the past decade, the authors noted that the majority of money underpinning that wealth was either tied up in housing or needed to be put towards a pension shortfall.
Chapter 3: What legal challenges is Costco facing regarding import duties?
In its Wealth in Ireland report, Davies' analysis calculates net wealth in Ireland, which was reported as ā¬1.3 trillion at the end of June, will double to ā¬2.6 trillion by 2035. This forecast reflects a slower annual growth rate, dropping from 9% to 6% for the next decade. However, the wealth manager warned the headline figure masks the fact that many households feel financially insecure.
Chapter 4: How does the IBM CEO view the future of AI data centers?
The BBC reports that multinational retail giant Costco has sued the US government to secure a full refund of import duties if the Supreme Court rejects President Trump's authority to impose tariffs without congressional approval.
Costco's lawsuit urges the Federal Trade Court to declare Trump's emergency tariffs illegal, an authority the president says he has under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act 2019. Two lower courts have already ruled that Trump exceeded his authority by using emergency powers to impose tariffs.
Chapter 5: What are the economic implications of AI infrastructure costs?
The case has now reached the Supreme Court and several companies are trying to protect their rights to refunds should the justices strike down the tariffs. And daggons.com reports that the IBM chief executive, Arvind Krishna, has cast serious doubt on whether the tech industry's massive spending on AI data centres can ever pay for itself.
Speaking on the Decoder podcast, he said that at current infrastructure costs, the numbers simply don't work and that today's AI hardware is unlikely to take companies anywhere close to true AGI. Krishna walked through the rough economics as he saw them. Building and filing a one gigawatt data centre today costs around $80 billion, he said.
So when a single company commits to 20 or 30 gigawatts, something which several AI giants are planning, that's up to one and a half trillion in capital spending.