Other people's salaries are always intriguing, but no one likes to talk about how much they make with anyone else, therefore we can never really compare others earnings to our own. At the same time, the salaries of world leaders, including presidents and prime ministers, are far from secrets, and when they’re leaked to the public, it becomes the talk of the town. Would you be happy to find out that US President Donald Trump is earning far less than you earn in a month? Find out just what these 17 world leaders make in the article below.
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Solberg has been the Norwegian Prime Minister from 2013 and the second woman in this senior position. At the age of 16, Erna was diagnosed with dyslexia, but was still very active and was elected to chair the student council in Norway. She has lead the Norwegian Conservative Party since 2004 and served as the regional development minister and local government.
Teresa Mae has served as prime minister since 2016 and is the second woman to take on the job after Margaret Thatcher, so it's no wonder she's been selected by Time magazine as one of the world's 100 most influential people. Theresa worked as a financial adviser to the Bank of England until 1997 and was later elected as the representative of the Maidenhead district in the British Parliament and the interior minister in the government of her predecessor, David Cameron.
Jóhannesson was sworn in in 2016 at the age of 48 and became the youngest president in the history of Iceland to be elected. The most surprising detail about his election is his non-affiliation to any political party or membership in any organized religious community. Before being elected to the presidency, Jóhannesson was a senior lecturer at the University of Iceland, where he also studied, in the Faculty of Modern History of Iceland.
Rutte has been Prime Minister of the Netherlands since 2010 and is a leader of the center-right party, the VVD. Rutte served as Deputy Minister of Employment and Trade of the Netherlands and later as Deputy Minister of Education, Culture, and Science. In 2012, after his government was disbanded following a no-confidence motion, Rutte was re-elected prime minister and this time with a larger majority of voters.
Macron is the eighth president of the French Republic and the youngest since Napoleon Bonaparte. He began his career as an investment banker and later served as the advisor to François Hollande, the former president of France. Macron was appointed Minister of Economy in the government of Manuel Valles, Prime Minister of France, and holds the title of Co-Prince of Andorra.
Abe is a son of a family of politicians and grandson of the Japanese prime minister in the 1950s, and in the past, he studied political science and public policy. Since 1982 he has served as an assistant to the Japanese Foreign Minister and later held several other political positions in the Liberal Democratic Party in Japan. In 1993 he entered the political system as a full politician until he was appointed leader. In 2006 he was elected Prime Minister of Japan for one year only, until 2012 when Abe was elected to a second term that continues to this day.
Stefan Löfven is Sweden's 33rd Prime Minister from 2014 and began his career in the political system in 1973 in a series of junior positions on behalf of the Social Democratic Party. During his lifetime, Löfven advanced to senior positions, including the president of the Nordic Metal Workers' Union, until in 2012 he was elected to head the party that is now in power.
Charles Michel is the youngest minister and prime minister ever to be in Belgium, and this is no surprise in a country where his father, Louis Michel, previously served as foreign minister in previous governments. In 1993, at the age of 18, Charles became a councilor in the city of Jodoigne and five years later began to study law, was ordained as a lawyer and is currently serving as 38th prime minister, a position he was elected to in 2014.
Chancellor Angela Merkel grew up in East Germany after World War II and became the first woman to serve in this role. She began her political life shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, and already in 1990 served as Deputy Spokesman for the Government. The rise through the German government continued at the age of 36 when she was appointed Minister of Women and Youth in the government of Chancellor Helmut Kohl and was promoted to the Minister of Environment and Nuclear Security. Years later Merkel stood at the head of the Christian Democratic Party and in 2005 was elected chancellor, a position she holds to this day.
Prime Minister Xavier Bettel was born and raised in Luxembourg. He trained as a lawyer in 2001 and belongs to the LGBTQ community. In 2011 he was elected mayor of the city of Luxembourg and in 2013 he ran for the premiership of the Democratic Party and won the elections, making him the 24th head of state. In addition, he serves as Minister of Communications, Minister of Religious Affairs and Minister of State.
Trudeau is second on the list of Canada's youngest prime ministers and was elected in 2015. His political career began in 2008 when he was elected to the Canadian Parliament, and the political blood must have been in Trudeau's veins from infancy since his father, Pierre Eliot Trudeau, was also the Prime Minister between 1969 and 1979.
The Prime Minister of Australia is a man of many skills. He was born in Sydney, studied law and at the same time worked as a journalist, and later established an investment bank. From 1993 to 2000, he headed the Australian Republican Movement and was one of the drafters of the constitutional change proposal, which was to turn Australia into a republic.
Donald Trump, the head of the Republican Party of the United States, was elected in 2016 to be the 45th president of one of the world's largest powers. Prior to entering politics, Trump was a businessman, construction entrepreneur and reality star, and he owns “The Trump Organization”, which is responsible, among other things, for building skyscrapers throughout the United States and abroad. His private fortune is estimated at about $3 billion, which is probably the reason he promised to receive only $1 from the state budget for his salary and donate the rest. The president of the United States’ annual salary is usually $400,000 a year.
Lee Hsien Long, the third prime minister of Singapore and the eldest son of the country's first prime minister, also served as finance minister in his youth and engaged in political affairs and his father's political work when he was younger. He studied public administration at Harvard University and completed, among other things, a bachelor's degree in mathematics and a diploma in computer science. Lee began his current position in 2004, and for that reason, he gave up his previous role as finance minister of the state.
Benjamin Netanyahu is the head of the Likud Party, the largest party in Israel since 1977. From 1996 to 1999, he sat in the prime minister's chair for the first time, and from 2009 until now he holds the position for the second time. Netanyahu served in Israeli governments as finance minister and foreign minister, and as head of the opposition, and in his distant past was even Israel's ambassador to the United Nations.
Jimmy Morales, President of Guatemala, was a comedian, director, and film producer before he entered politics. He began his career in this field in 2011, after running for mayor of Guatemala City and reaching third place. In 2013, he joined the National Union Front, for which he ran in the 2015 elections and was elected to serve as 37th President of Guatemala.
