ARCTIC: Trump’s Trade War & more – 8th April 2025

Góðan daginn from Keswick Village! This is the Rorshok Arctic Update from the 8th of April twenty twenty-five. A quick summary of what’s going down North of the Arctic Circle!

President Trump’s global trade war has officially reached the Arctic. On Friday the 4th, he announced sweeping tariffs on all imports, including from some of the world’s most remote regions.

Strangely, the list includes Svalbard and Jan Mayen, Norwegian Arctic islands which have virtually no exports to the U.S. Jan Mayen is uninhabited, and Svalbard exports nothing to the US. While the impact on these regions may be small, the inclusion highlights the chaotic nature of Trump’s policies, reaching into the Arctic, even where no trade exists.

Meanwhile, Canada faces a twenty-five percent tariff, Norway sixteen percent, and Iceland, Sweden, and Finland each ten percent.

In response to Trump’s tariffs leveled at Canada, the northern province of Yukon is taking aim against Elon Musk’s companies for his role advising the US government. Ranj Pillai, the Premier of the Yukon, announced on Thursday the 3rd that his territorial government was ending rebates for Tesla products, cancelling some of its Starlink accounts, and quitting the social media platform X, all of which are owned by Musk.

Pillai said that the US tariffs are having a real negative impact on the lives of the Yukon’s residents, and his government will stand in solidarity with its people by retaliating against Trump.

There are further economic struggles in the Swedish Arctic. On Thursday the 3rd, Mikael Jansson from the North Sweden European Office, the agency tasked with ensuring northern Sweden is represented in EU negotiations, spoke with news agency SVT. Jansson said that Sweden’s recent huge boost to military spending will hurt northern Sweden’s communities.

He said that the region currently receives about $200 million US dollars from the EU for green energy and local infrastructure projects, but that he expected this money to be repurposed for military needs, and that northern Sweden will be left without vital economic support.

Speaking of military investment in the Arctic, Russia is breaking new ground in the Arctic Ocean. On Tuesday the 1st, the Russian Navy announced that the country’s first icebreaking patrol vessel, the Ivan Papanin, has arrived in Arctic waters, showing Russia’s attempts to bolster its dominance over Arctic waters through heavy investment in its armed forces.

This is a significant military development in the far north as the Ivan Papanin is the first warship equipped with an ice-resistant hull, which will allow the ship to operate year-round in high-latitude regions.

Russia’s Arctic industries are pushing forward too. On Thursday the 3rd, news agency High North News published a story revealing that Novatek, Russia’s major energy company, has resumed work on the Arctic LNG 2 project after a six-month halt due to international sanctions. Satellite imagery shows new construction and signs of test operations at the site, indicating preparations to restart natural gas production.

With U.S. President Trump having issued no new sanctions against Russia since taking office, Novatek appears increasingly confident in continuing its operations without US interference. The development marks a significant step in Russia’s bid to expand its Arctic energy dominance.

Russia is breaking new ground, but over in Greenland, old ground is being embraced. On Monday the 31st of March, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, the new Greenlandic Prime Minister, told Reuters that he is seeking to strengthen ties with Denmark rather than pursue independence at the moment. He noted that, while Greenland hopes to eventually become independent, in this time of international uncertainty, keeping a close relationship with Denmark is in the best interest of keeping Greenland safe.

In other diplomacy news, the relationship between the EU and the Indigenous Saami people is growing tense. In March, the EU approved nearly fifty mining projects to be fast-tracked to secure critical mineral supplies. But on Wednesday the 2nd, Per-Olof Nutti, the Saami Council President, condemned the decision, revealing that nine of the sites are on Saami land—and the Saami there were not consulted before making the decision. He called the move a violation of Indigenous rights and an attack on Saami culture.

Nutti stressed that Saami communities lack the resources to mount a legal challenge and urged the EU to respect Indigenous rights by ensuring no projects move forward without full, informed consent.

In scientific news, the University of Gothenburg published a study on Monday the 31st of March saying that the thinning of sea ice could cause a major ocean current to disappear by two thousand one hundred. The current being studied is the Beaufort Gyre, located north of Canada and Alaska. This region is normally covered in sea ice which stores large amounts of freshwater, which in turn influences oceanic health in the Arctic and North Atlantic.

But this ice is melting and thinning rapidly, releasing fresh water into the Atlantic Ocean. The study predicts that if this trend continues and global warming is not halted, the North Atlantic could be flooded with freshwater, weakening global ocean circulation.

In better scientific news, on Wednesday the 2nd the University of Calgary announced they have created a team set to revolutionize arctic wildlife conservation. Their project will take place in the Kitikmeot Region of Nunavut, northern Canada, and will create a wildlife health, insect, and pathogen surveillance network. The aim of the project is to make Arctic conservation proactive rather than reactive, to identify threats to nature before they can develop, and therefore protect biodiversity before it is ever endangered.

The project will cooperate with local Inuit communities, and has even set aside about $400,000 US dollars to provide educational scholarships for young Indigenous Northerners, to encourage them to become scientifically trained to protect their homelands.

However, wildlife conservation is not a priority in Finland. On Thursday the 3rd, the Finnish government issued its final approval to make the hunting of large carnivores much easier, according to a press release issued by the Ministry of Agriculture. Bears, wolves and lynxes have been granted protected statuses for many years, but the Finnish government believes more of these animals need to be hunted to keep their populations under control.

The Finnish Association for Nature Conservation criticized the plan, pointing out that the EU considers each of these species as either endangered or highly endangered, and that populations have actually been in decline in recent years.

Following on from stories from previous shows about Icelandic eruptions, yet another volcanic eruption has caused disruption to the southern town of Grindavik. According to the Icelandic Met Office, the Sundhnúkur volcano erupted for the eighth time since November twenty twenty-three on Tuesday the 1st. The eruption was initially huge, with a rift of twenty kilometers (or over twelve miles) opening in the earth and lava breaching the town’s defence walls. But thankfully the activity didn’t increase from there and on Thursday the 3rd, the Met Office declared the eruption over.

The local police conducted an emergency evacuation on Tuesday the 1st. The evacuation order remains in place until at least the 8th of April while Grindavik awaits to see if their neighbourly volcano erupts once again.

Finally this week, history was made way above the North Pole. On Friday the 4th, the historic Fram2 space expedition completed its journey, touching down in the ocean near California safely. The mission is the first manned spacecraft to move in the Earth’s polar orbit, completing fifty laps of the Arctic and Antarctic over about four days in order to study the auroras above the poles in great detail.

To add to the Arctic flair, the commander of the space mission was Jannicke Mikkelsen, who is from Svalbard. She became the first female Norwegian in space, and first ever European to command a space mission.

To learn more about this unique space mission, take a look at the link in the show notes.

Aaand that’s it for this week! Thank you for joining us!

Enjoying the update? We hope so! Wanna chat, toss us an idea, or ask something? Email us at info@rorshok.com.

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