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Comment by klunger | Hacker News Reader

I live in Norway. There has been pressure for some time on the government to do this because of the salmon exports. Fishing is not as big as oil, but it is still an important part of the economy here. Losing China as a customer meant bad news for a lot of folks in the fishing industry here. Also, since Norway is trying (unsuccessfully so far, but still they are trying) to lessen dependence on oil, this loss mattered even more than you might think at first glance.

Not saying that caving to normalize relations was "right," but it definitely had quite a bit of domestic support here.

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> Fishing is not as big as oil, but it is still an important part of the economy

Meh. It employs 7k-10k people and contributes 0.7% of the economy. That is chickenfeed, and a particularly dumb thing to give up their principles over - particularly because processed fish are a fungible commodity and could be sold for the same price outside of China.

It is roughly 5.4% of exports http://atlas.media.mit.edu/en/profile/country/nor/#Exports

Does not compare to oil I guess, but I would not call it chickenfeed. It probably does get oversized media attention though, which is why this has so much domestic support.

> processed fish are a fungible commodity and could be sold for the same price outside of China

yes. right. that aspect of this story puzzles me. i thought that was how globalism worked.

i mean, can't Norway just sell the fish to, say, Canada, which could then sell its farmed salmon to China, etc?

i can't quite see what difference this will make. is Norway geographically closer to China than other salmon producing nations? how do they explain this?

Those triangulations are possible only if the destination country is willing to pay a premium for the banned goods.

Norwegian salmon would cost more in China because the Canadians are going to put some markup on it (and fairly, because they'll have to do some work on their own.) Or keep the same price for the consumer and gain less. In both cases Norway is going to lose money compared to normal commercial relationships.

Right. Sorry, I didn't explain my thoughts well.

This is more what I had in mind: Instead of selling its salmon to China, Norway sells all of its salmon to the US, France and Germany. So now US, French and German consumers buy that much less salmon from other salmon farming countries like Chile and Canada. And Chile and Canada are free to sell their farm-raised salmon to China.

In principle you are right. In practice the supply chains must get some incentive to switch to new suppliers. Perfect cooperation would suffice but usually it's price cuts.

> Also, since Norway is trying (unsuccessfully so far, but still they are trying) to lessen dependence on oil, this loss mattered even more than you might think at first glance.

On that topic, I wonder if China offered any assurances regarding support for Norway's territorial claims in the Arctic Circle.

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