President Trump, Norway's Prime Minister Støre, and Norway's Finance Minister Stoltenberg spoke about US-Norwegian cooperation, and the Norwegian petroleum fund.
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00:00Mr. President, Norway is the third country to be officially invited to the White House after liberation today.
00:09Why did you invite Norway so soon to the White House?
00:13Because I like them.
00:15And I like your prime minister, and I like the way your government runs.
00:20And I respect the king.
00:22He's highly respected in Norway.
00:24It's a great thing.
00:25Not an easy thing to do.
00:27He's done a great job.
00:29Yeah.
00:30Would you like an invitation to visit the king?
00:32Absolutely.
00:33You give me that invitation.
00:35I just told the president he's welcome to visit Norway.
00:38President Trump, first my part is what you said before that you like the Norwegian Petroleum Fund.
00:45And I'm wondering if that has been up for a discussion today, the way that we have structured our money and what our relations are.
00:54Well, this fund was created in the late 1990s to save for future generations the income from our oil and gas.
01:02Norwegians should continue to work as hard, dedicated, innovate, and move forward despite having these incomes,
01:09which we happen to be in the period or history where we can harvest, and we have transferred that into investments, half of them, by the way, here in the United States.
01:18So I think this is a model which we have been able to explore if we can share experiences, and we do with our colleagues in the U.S.
01:26You never copy this one-to-one, but there can be techniques and ways of working that we have used in organizing our fund.
01:37But Jens Stoltenberg was the finance minister when the first dollar entered that fund, so he is a safe hand to have as a finance minister today.
01:47What do you say?
01:48No, and as you said, Mr. Prime Minister, we are ready to sit down with the U.S. to also work with them on if they want to establish a sovereign wealth fund,
01:57because we have a good experience with our fund.
01:59And I think that one example of how we work together with the United States is that half of the fund, close to one trillion U.S. dollars,
02:08are invested in the United States, mainly in equity, but also some in fixed income, including government funds.
02:16So this is an expression of trust in the United States, expressed by the strong investment of the sovereign wealth fund.
02:23Then just briefly on Ukraine, since it was mentioned, we had a very good and extensive discussion about Ukraine, the path forward to peace.
02:32And as the Prime Minister said, we commend the U.S. for pushing forward to try to find a negotiated solution.
02:38At the same time, we need to continue to support Ukraine, and therefore I'm proud that Norway has actually tripled the military support to Ukraine,
02:47and this year we will allocate close to eight billion U.S. dollars to Ukraine.
02:53That will strengthen them, and also a hand on the negotiating table.
02:56I may add to that, you know, if there is a peace, and there will be a peace,
02:59we have a common responsibility in securing democratic Ukraine for the future.
03:03And the best security guarantee they can have is the ability to defend themselves, and we are investing in that.
03:09Mr. Prime Minister, if I may, as it relates to terrorism.