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.
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.
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?
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.
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.