Industrial Policy & Trade Monitor· 2666 actions· ✨ 90 recent

On June 2, 2026, USTR published final actionability findings in 60 parallel Section 301(b) investigations — the largest simultaneous Section 301 action in US history — determining that all 60 economies maintain unreasonable acts, policies, or practices by failing to impose or effectively enforce a prohibition on imports produced with forced labor. USTR proposed two additional duty rates: 10% on the 14 economies with partial forced-labor regimes (Canada, Ecuador, EU, Indonesia, Mexico, Pakistan, Argentina, Bangladesh, Cambodia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Malaysia, Taiwan, UK) and 12.5% on the remaining 46 economies. Tariff rates remain proposed pending a July 7, 2026 public hearing and subsequent finalization; the actionability determination is final.

On 21 May 2026 the Korea Trade Commission (KTC) at its 473rd plenary session adopted a final affirmative anti-dumping determination against PVC paste resin (PSR) imports from Germany, France, Norway and Sweden, recommending definitive five-year duties of 25.79–31.55% to the Ministry of Economy and Finance (MOEF) for formal imposition via customs notification. The case was initiated in July 2025 following a complaint by Hanwha Solutions Corp., and provisional duties of 25.79–42.81% have been in effect since February 2026; the final rates represent a notable reduction from the provisional upper bound. The KTC concluded that PSR dumping from the four European countries caused tangible injury to Korea's domestic chemical industry.

On 11 March 2026 USTR Ambassador Jamieson Greer initiated parallel Section 301 investigations into the acts, policies, and practices of 16 economies — China, the European Union, Singapore, Switzerland, Norway, Indonesia, Malaysia, Cambodia, Thailand, Korea, Vietnam, Taiwan, Bangladesh, Mexico, Japan, and India — relating to structural excess capacity and overproduction in manufacturing sectors. The Federal Register notice (FR doc 2026-05214; dockets USTR-2026-0067 and USTR-2026-0068) was published on 17 March 2026. Covered sectors include aluminum, automobiles, batteries, cement, chemicals, electronics, energy goods, glass, machine tools, machinery, paper, plastics, processed food and beverages, robotics, satellites, semiconductors, ships, solar modules, steel, and transportation equipment. Written comments were due by 15 April 2026; USTR held the public hearing beginning 5 May 2026. This is the most sweeping multi-economy Section 301 initiative since the 2018 China investigation and is structurally distinct from the China-only 2024-05-14 §301 tariff hikes and the 2025-07-15 Brazil §301 investigation.

On 11 December 2025 the US Department of State announced the inaugural Pax Silica Summit, held in Washington D.C. on 12 December 2025, at which the United States, Australia, Japan, the Republic of Korea, the United Kingdom, Singapore and Israel signed the non-binding Pax Silica Declaration. The declaration commits signatories to coordinate "trusted" supply chains across the full technology stack — software, frontier foundation models, network infrastructure, compute and semiconductors, advanced manufacturing, transportation logistics, minerals refining and processing, and energy — explicitly to reduce "coercive dependencies." The coalition has since expanded to add the United Arab Emirates, Greece, Qatar, Sweden and India (signed 20 February 2026 at the India AI Impact Summit), and on 26 March 2026 State announced a USD 250 million Pax Silica Fund intended to catalyse trusted-capital co-investment in critical-minerals processing and semiconductor supply chains.

NIB, the multilateral development bank owned by the eight Nordic and Baltic member states, signed a NOK 1 billion (EUR 86 million / USD 100 million) loan with Hafslund AS, Norway's second-largest renewable energy group and largest district-heating supplier. The loan is split into two NOK 500 million tranches with eight- and eleven-year tenors and finances three projects: reconstruction of the Braskereidfoss hydropower dam and plants on the Glomma River (destroyed by Storm Hans in 2023), construction of the 20 MW Skygard data centre at Økern, Oslo, and an upgrade of Aker Hospital's district-heating connection. NIB financing is provided at preferential development-bank rates relative to commercial project finance, functioning as a below-market state-backed subsidy to strategic domestic energy and digital infrastructure.

On 27 May 2026 the US Department of Commerce published preliminary affirmative determinations that high purity dissolving pulp from Brazil and Norway is being sold in the United States at less than fair value, setting preliminary antidumping cash-deposit rates of 7.20% for Brazil and 6.54% for Norway (period of investigation: 1 July 2024 – 30 June 2025). Brazil is also subject to a companion preliminary countervailing duty determination (published 25 March 2026) with rates of 3.67% for Bracell Bahia Specialty Cellulose S.A. and 3.56% for all other Brazilian producers/exporters; Commerce offsets the AD cash-deposit rate by the export-subsidy portion of the CVD rate to avoid double counting. The investigations were initiated 2 September 2025 (notice published 8 September 2025) on a petition by Rayonier Advanced Materials, Inc. and the United Steelworkers (USW).

The European Investment Bank (EIB) signed a EUR 250 million financing package with Nexans SA on 31 July 2025 (project reference 20240854, "Nexans Recycling and Electrification Investment"; publicly announced 22 September 2025), against a total project cost of approximately EUR 382 million. The loan backs Nexans' 2024-2029 research, development and innovation programme for high-, medium- and low-voltage power cables, plus copper-recycling and manufacturing-capacity investments across France, Belgium, Sweden and Norway. The financing is structured as a EUR 190 million tranche carrying an InvestEU guarantee and a EUR 60 million second tranche.

The US Department of Commerce preliminarily determined that countervailable subsidies are being provided to producers and exporters of silicon metal from Laos, Australia, Norway, and Thailand, publishing four parallel preliminary affirmative CVD determinations on 2025-09-26 following an initiation on 2025-05-21 (petition by Ferroglobe USA, Inc. and Mississippi Silicon LLC). For Laos, Commerce set a preliminary countervailable-subsidy cash-deposit rate of 240.00% ad valorem for both the sole mandatory respondent, Lao Silicon Co., Ltd., and the all-others rate, based entirely on adverse facts available after finding the respondent did not cooperate. Companion CVD investigations against Australia, Norway, and Thailand were found affirmative the same day, each with its own preliminary subsidy-rate cash-deposit schedule. Commerce ordered CBP to suspend liquidation and require cash deposits at the indicated rates on covered entries from the Laos determination onward. Final CVD determinations are aligned with companion antidumping investigations on the same product.

NIB, the multilateral development bank owned by the eight Nordic and Baltic member states, signed a EUR 30 million, 15-year loan with Norwegian utility Sogn og Fjordane Energi AS (SFE) to finance the rebuild of the Øksenelvane hydropower plant in Western Norway. The new station, built alongside the existing 70-year-old facility to keep generation running through construction, will add roughly 21 GWh/y of output and nearly quadruple capacity, with completion expected in 2028. NIB's below-market development-bank funding cost functions as a state-adjacent subsidy for Norwegian renewable-energy infrastructure.

NIB, the multilateral development bank owned by the eight Nordic and Baltic member states, signed a five-year NOK 250 million (EUR 26 million) onlending facility with SpareBank 1 Helgeland, a regional savings bank in Helgeland County, northern Norway. The facility is part of NIB's Arctic Facility and finances onward lending to SMEs and smaller mid-cap companies across agriculture, aquaculture, real estate, and construction, as well as environmental projects in the region. It is the third loan agreement between NIB and the bank, following an earlier SME-only facility and a renewable-energy loan. NIB financing is priced at preferential development-bank rates relative to commercial project finance, functioning as a below-market state-backed subsidy channelled to regional SME lending.

On 6 May 2025 the European Investment Fund (EIF) and Danske Bank signed an InvestEU-backed guarantee agreement making up to EUR 178 million in fresh financing available to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and small mid-cap companies in Denmark, Sweden and Norway. The facility, rolled out before summer 2025, is split roughly 60% toward sustainability (renewable energy, energy efficiency) projects and 40% toward innovation and digitalisation, and follows a EUR 50 million EIF guarantee for Finnish green investments agreed with Danske Bank in 2024.

Norway's Ministry of Trade, Industry and Fisheries (Nærings- og fiskeridepartementet) submitted Meld. St. 16 (2024-2025) — "The Norwegian industry – competitiveness for a new time" — to the Storting on 28 March 2025 under Minister Cecilie Myrseth. The White Paper is Norway's first comprehensive industrial-policy framework in over a decade and sets out six political priorities: (i) access to clean and affordable energy via hydropower, offshore wind and green hydrogen; (ii) high-quality workforce with dual apprenticeship and digital-skills tracks; (iii) accelerating innovation and technology through R&D investment and stronger research-institute-to-business linkages; (iv) emission reduction across industrial sectors; (v) expanding international market access and reshaping Norway's position in the extended European value chain; and (vi) strategic and critical value-chain mapping, paralleled by a simultaneously launched cross-government mapping initiative. The White Paper is a non-binding policy framework but is the framing instrument under which sector-specific measures (CRMA-aligned mineral support, hydrogen funding, offshore-wind capacity build-out) will be sequenced.

Stortinget adopted Norway's new Minerals Act (Lov om mineralvirksomhet og forvaltning av mineralressurser) on 12 June 2025, replacing the 2009 Minerals Act and entering into force 1 July 2026. The statute introduces a national-security review pillar enabling authorities to deny or condition projects that threaten national preparedness, reduces exploration-licence duration from seven to three years to accelerate project initiation, expands Sámi consultation protections from Finnmark to all traditional Sámi areas (Sápmi), and mandates explicit alignment with the EU Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA, Regulation (EU) 2024/1252). The Act covers Norway's most strategically significant mineral assets including the Fen carbonatite REE field (Europe's largest known REE deposit) and major copper-zinc deposits.

On 25 March 2025 the European Commission adopted the first list of 47 Strategic Projects inside the EU under Article 7 of the Critical Raw Materials Act (Regulation (EU) 2024/1252), followed on 4 June 2025 by 13 Strategic Projects located in third countries — 60 designations in total. The 47 EU projects span 13 Member States and 14 strategic raw materials, with an expected EUR 22.5bn capital-investment envelope; the 13 third-country projects require a further EUR 5.5bn. Designation triggers fast-track permitting (max 27 months for extraction, 15 months for processing/recycling), preferential access to EU/EIB/EBRD finance, and Member State priority status, operationalising the CRMA's 2030 benchmarks (≥10% extraction, ≥40% processing, ≥25% recycling, ≤65% single-country dependence).

Naalakkersuisut (Government of Greenland), via the Mineral Resources Authority under Minister Naaja H. Nathanielsen, published the Mineral Resources Strategy 2025-2029 in January 2025. The strategy succeeds the 2020-2024 strategy and sets the operational priorities, licensing pipeline and investor-engagement framework for Greenland's mineral sector across the 2025-2029 window. Headline tracks: sustainability (social/environmental/ economic), targeted international marketing and export-import-bank cooperation to mobilise project finance, formal critical-minerals partnerships with the EU and the US (and Nordic regional cooperation), a certification system for small-scale licensees, and expanded geoscientific data availability. The 2021 Inatsisartut Act prohibiting uranium-bearing exploration and exploitation above 100 ppm is preserved.

On 14 January 2025 in Washington, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide signed a bilateral Memorandum of Cooperation on High-Standard, Market-Oriented Trade of Critical Minerals. The instrument formalises an intergovernmental framework for cooperation on critical-minerals supply chains and embeds a Non-Market Policies and Practices (NMPP) analysis framework jointly developed by the US Department of Commerce and Norway's Ministry of Trade, Industry and Fisheries to identify and respond to non-market distortions in third countries. The MoC sits structurally alongside the parallel US bilateral track with Kazakhstan (Nov 2025), Uzbekistan, Guinea, Morocco, Peru and the Philippines (Feb 2026), extending the post-2024 US critical-minerals MoU architecture into a Western-aligned high-standards producer (Norway hosts the Fen Complex REE deposit and the Engebø rutile/garnet project).

Norway's Ministry of Foreign Affairs amended the Eksportkontrollforskrift (Regulations on the export of defence- related products, dual-use items, technology and services) to add a new national control list — Annex III ("List III") — for emerging and disruptive technologies not yet covered by the EU dual-use list. Exports of items on Annex III require a licence from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs regardless of destination, including a catch-all licensing obligation. Controls cover semiconductor manufacturing equipment (including dry-etch apparatus), enriched silicon/germanium substrates, high- performance integrated circuits, quantum computers above specified controlled-qubit thresholds, quantum software and technology, software/technology for reverse-engineering integrated-circuit layouts, and additive-manufacturing equipment for metal/alloy components. The amendment, announced 3 October 2024 and effective 1 November 2024 (with a one-month transitional period), aligns Norway with parallel national measures adopted by the United States (BIS 6 Sep 2024 emerging- technology IFR), the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Japan, Spain, Denmark and Finland.

President Lukashenko signed Decree No. 278 on 10 July 2024, extending the prohibitive import customs duty regime established under Decree No. 16 (12 January 2024) through 30 June 2025, preventing its lapse at year-end 2024. The decree also expands the commodity list subject to elevated import duty rates. The measure explicitly frames the duties as retaliatory, targeting goods originating from states designated as "unfriendly" to Belarus — principally EU member states, the US, UK, Canada, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland, and other sanctioning jurisdictions. Co-ordinated with Russia's EAEU parallel-import framework (Resolution No. 506), the regime affects the cost arithmetic for sanctioned-goods routing through EAEU customs-union channels and signals continued institutionalisation of Belarus's counter-sanctions architecture.

Regulation (EU) 2023/2842, published in the Official Journal on 20 December 2023, is the first comprehensive recast of the EU fisheries control framework since Council Regulation (EC) No 1224/2009, and amends the IUU Regulation (EC) No 1005/2008 alongside five sectoral regulations (1967/2006, 2016/1139, 2017/2403, 2019/473). Effective in phases from 10 January 2026, it mandates the CATCH electronic catch-certification IT system for ALL imports of wild-capture marine fishery products into the EU single market, replacing legacy paper catch certificates. It also introduces Remote Electronic Monitoring (REM) with CCTV on high-risk EU vessels ≥18 m, full electronic reporting for all vessels by 2028, and extended Vessel Monitoring System (VMS) coverage down to vessels ≥12 m. The regulation tightens the carding regime (red/yellow cards for non-cooperating flag states under the amended IUU Regulation) and requires digital traceability end-to-end through the supply chain, raising compliance cost and market-access barriers for all non-EU seafood exporters.

On 8 December 2023 the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) published a direct final rule (88 FR 85479; FR Doc 2023-26532) making two export-liberalisation amendments to the Export Administration Regulations (EAR). First, BIS removes Chemical and Biological Weapons (CB) proliferation column controls from the Commerce Country Chart for exports of certain pathogens and toxins (ECCNs 1C351, 1C353, and 1C354) when destined to Australia Group (AG) member countries, on the basis that AG members operate equivalent domestic CBW-export controls. Second, the rule revises the Crime Control and Detection (CC) column entries for Austria, Finland, Ireland, Liechtenstein, South Korea, Sweden, and Switzerland, reflecting the updated US assessment of those countries' law-enforcement export-control standards. Both changes are effective on publication and reduce US export-licensing burdens for allied-country destinations without altering controls for non-allied markets.

Norway's Ministry of Trade, Industry and Fisheries (NFD) published the national mineral strategy on 21 June 2023, establishing a comprehensive framework to develop domestic critical-mineral resources sustainably while anchoring Norway's role in EU and allied supply chains. The strategy introduces a "hurtigspor" (fast-track) permitting procedure for projects of strategic significance, coordinates the Norwegian Geological Survey (NGU) and Directorate of Mineral Management around critical-raw-material mapping, and signals consideration of a state investment vehicle to secure Norwegian equity stakes in domestic mineral projects. Key mineral resources targeted include the Fen Complex rare-earth deposit (the largest validated EU REE resource), the Engebø rutile/garnet project (Nordic Mining), and the primary aluminium cluster (Hydro).

Lov 2023-06-20 nr. 77 (Lov om endringer i sikkerhetsloven — eierskapskontroll og lovens virkeområde), adopted by the Storting on 9 June 2023, signed 20 June 2023, in force 1 July 2023, is Norway's first substantive overhaul of Chapter 10 (Eierskapskontroll / ownership control) of the 2018 Security Act (Sikkerhetsloven). The amendment widens the scope of undertakings that can be brought under ownership control beyond entities directly linked to a "grunnleggende nasjonal funksjon" (fundamental national function) to include businesses of vital importance to national-security interests and businesses of significant importance to fundamental national functions, lowers and adds notification thresholds, and equips the King in Council with enhanced powers to block, condition, or unwind qualifying acquisitions. The reform converts a narrow security-classified regime into a broad horizontal FDI-screening architecture for Norway, the host of the world's largest sovereign wealth fund and a NATO frontline state.

On 9 January 2024 the Norwegian Parliament (Stortinget) endorsed the government's White Paper Meld. St. 25 (2022–2023) by an 80–20 vote, authorising the opening of approximately 281,000 km² of Arctic continental-shelf area between mainland Norway, Jan Mayen and Svalbard for commercial seabed-mineral exploration. The decision operates under the 2019 Seabed Minerals Act (havbunnsmineralloven) and made Norway the first Western/NATO sovereign jurisdiction to authorise large-scale deep-sea mining for energy-transition critical minerals (polymetallic sulphides, manganese crusts containing copper, cobalt, lithium, zinc and rare earths). The Energy Ministry prepared a first licensing round in 2024 but the Støre government postponed it in December 2024 after budget-negotiation pressure from the Socialist Left (SV) party; the statutory authorisation remains in force.