“Instead of raising walls, we should bring down barriers,” Rasmussen said. “Europe will stand united. Europe will give robust and proportional answers.”
Norwegian Trade Minister Cecilie Myrseth said Trump’s decision to level 15 percent tariffs on Norway — which is not an EU member — would have a “critical” impact on the country’s economy.
“This is a serious day, and now, we need to get an overview of what this actually means for Norway,” she told broadcaster NRK, adding that tariffs against the EU also affected Oslo due to their expansive trade links. “We also send a lot of exports to the EU. So, it will also affect us.”
Another non-EU member country with high levels of trades with the bloc, Switzerland, called for “respect for international law and free trade” after Trump slapped a 31 percent tariff on its goods.
Switzerland “will quickly determine the next steps,” its President Karin Keller-Sutter said.
Bernd Lange, who chairs the European Parliament’s International Trade Committee, slammed the tariffs as “unjustified, illegal and disproportionate,” while Jörgen Warborn, the international trade spokesperson for the European People’s Party group, the largest faction in the Parliament, said it is “hard to keep cool when a friend is acting like a bully.”
