Former NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg, who has became Norway’s new finance minister, said engaging with the administration of US President Donald Trump on trade was key to avoiding European Union tariffs
His comments on February 4 came as the EU braced for a potential transatlantic trade war.
The appointment of the widely respected veteran politician and diplomat at a time of global trade tensions could give Norway’s struggling Labour government a boost in opinion polls ahead of September’s parliamentary elections, according to Reuters.
“My main advice is that one must spend time engaging with [the US], travel to [Washington] and speak with the administration, like we did with NATO,” Stoltenberg told reporters as he took up his post in the finance ministry.
“We are going to do everything we can to avoid tariffs being imposed on Norway.”
Stoltenberg was prime minister of Norway in 2000-2001 and 2005-2013. He headed the Western military alliance NATO for a decade, including during Trump’s first term, stepping down last year.
At NATO, Stoltenberg was dubbed the “Trump whisperer” for convincing him to stick with the alliance after the US president complained during his first term that allies were spending too little on defence and threatened to pull out.
Non-EU Norway, a country of 5.5 million with an export-oriented economy, has feared it could be vulnerable to a transatlantic trade war should Trump go ahead with his threat to impose tariffs on EU goods.
Norway’s main exports are oil, gas and fish.
The country’s eurosceptic Centre Party quit the government on February 4 in a dispute over the adoption of EU energy policies, leaving the centre-left Labour to rule alone.
Labour has been lagging in polls ahead of the September 28 vote. Stoltenberg was widely popular among Norwegians during his time at NATO and afterwards and many felt he could boost Labour’s prospects.
The 65-year-old is an economist by training and was finance minister in 1996-1997. He is widely seen as a pragmatist centrist.
In 2022, he was due to become Norway’s central bank chief but did not take up the role after then-US president Joe Biden asked him to continue as NATO chief.
During his first stint as PM, Stoltenberg set up the so-called spending rule, a self-imposed regulation that said Norwegian governments should not use more than 4 per cent of the total value of the sovereign wealth fund for national budgets.
That rule has since then been reduced to 3 per cent as the fund has grown in value.
