Arne O. Holm says The Flight to America Did Not Turn Out as Planned

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In the past couple of years, the part of the business sector that only speaks with its outside voice has created a gloomy picture of the Norwegian industry policy. 

From the top of the value chain, the advocacy groups, the Confederation of Norwegian Enterprise (NHO) and the Federation of Norwegian Industries, made the term "unpredictability" part of everyday language.

Sickening

Further down in the value chain, among the brokers who sit on both sides of any stock trade, the mood was, if possible, even worse. We were told the government was sickening and borderline corrupt.

I first understood how bad it was yesterday. The brokerage Arctic Securities presented its annual results. A total of 300 employees are to share NOK 1,1 billion in salary, bonuses, and dividends. Or an average of NOK 3,7 million per employee.

It couldn't get much worse in a country that some wealthy people refer to as a banana republic.

Some, such as the former battery company Freyr, faced the consequences of the lack of predictability, and moved, if not its operations, then at least its company, to the US. This occurred after the state declined to fund the private company with guarantees and NOK 10 billion of taxpayer money. 

The state clearly did not understand how gilt-edged such an investment would be, in a company that lacked both expertise and labor.

Everything is better

In the US, everything was so much better. As a part of American protectionism, something the business sector typically does not appreciate, America enticed with significant subsidies through the scheme known as the IRA.

Yet, Freyr's flight across the pond certainly did not make much of an impression on the company's shareholders. Nor did shutting down its core business in favor of solar energy, combined with a name change to perhaps shed its past, raise the share price.

At the time of writing, the value of the company, now known as T1 Energy, has decreased by almost 60 percent. And that is from an already low level. 

Part of the explanation could be that the predictability that the Norwegian industry lacked in its home country turned out to be completely absent in the US. Donald Trump made sure of that.

Since coming to power, he has fought tooth and nail to abolish the subsidy scheme through the IRA, in addition to attacking anything remotely reminiscent of the green industry. Most recently, he signed an executive order stopping the oil company Equinor's already initiated investment in offshore wind power in the US.

Banana republic

No one knows how many billions such a stop order will eventually cost the state-owned company.

Did someone mention a banana republic?

The company formerly known as Freyr clearly also fears the new regime. In a sensational stock exchange announcement a couple of weeks ago, the company praised Donald Trump's tariff policy.

"T1 Energy supports the imposition of tariffs announced this week by the U.S. administration," reads the stock exchange release issued on April 4th.

And that's not all. "The tariffs introduced this week dovetail with our strategy," the company added.

Time has shown that T1 is quite alone in the financial world in such a tribute, but they are not the only ones to have realized that flattery is the way to Donald Trump's simple head.

Yet, for some incomprehensible reason, the company behind the sensational stock exchange release has not caught on to Donald Trump's almost daily attacks on wind and solar energy, or as he put it the other day:

"You know what people also don’t like, those massive solar fields built over land that cover 10 miles by 10 miles,” Trump said. “I mean, they are ridiculous, the whole thing.”

Cash gifts in return for flattery

He said this while simultaneously halting a public allocation of USD 7 billion to the solar industry. For Trump, only oil, gas, and coal apply for a nation heading out of all climate cooperation.

Put simply, this is about how flattery from so-called green industries will always have to give way to gigantic cash gifts from the fossil industry.

Particularly in America.

I might be imagining it, but I have a feeling that the claims of lack of predictability in Norwegian industry policy have quieted down somewhat after Donald Trump took office.

If I'm wrong, there is at least a reason to expect that those who still talk the loudest find other heroes than Donald Trump's America.