Norway has secured what industry leaders say is the worst seafood tariff agreement of any major exporting nation in its new trade arrangement with the United States.
Audun Maråk, managing director of the vessel owners’ organisation Fiskebåt, said the outcome leaves Norway at a clear disadvantage compared with all its main competitors. “All our most important seafood competitors have secured better trade terms. Norway is bottom of the class,” he said.
Maråk accused the government of misinforming or obscuring the true result. He said that when the Minister of Trade and Industry previously claimed Norway had achieved the same tariffs as the EU, this was later proven wrong. He found it even more puzzling that Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre and former NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg had repeated the same claim, adding: “They should have known they would be exposed.”
Misleading Information
The lack of accurate information was underlined, Maråk said, when only days ago industry group Sjømat Norge stated Norway had secured equal tariffs to the EU and better terms than Canada – when in fact the opposite is true.
High-Level Contacts Yielded Nothing
Maråk said that meetings and phone calls between Støre, Stoltenberg and former US president Donald Trump made no difference. “The result speaks for itself – the government achieved nothing, or rather worse than nothing: a poorer tariff deal than all our key competitors,” he said.
He warned that the result is highly damaging for the Norwegian fishing industry and amounts to a failing grade. While acknowledging the government’s efforts and recognising the challenge for a small country negotiating alone with a superpower, he stressed: “Norway cannot live with worse trade terms than our competitors, and we cannot accept the government failing to present the reality.”
Pattern of Poor Outcomes
According to Maråk, the disappointing US deal is not unique. He said both the EU and the UK have recently achieved better trade terms for species such as mackerel in the vital Japanese market than Norway has managed.
“Norwegian industry must have trade terms equal to our competitors. Here the government has a job to do,” he said.
