Reinette Klever

Reinette Joanne Klever (born 21 July 1967) is a Dutch politician, asset manager and broadcaster. She has served as Minister for Foreign Trade and Development in the Schoof cabinet since July 2024, on behalf of the Party for Freedom (PVV).

Early career Klever studied business economics, and she worked for banks and other companies in Paris, New York City, and Santiago. She advocated abolishing health insurance deductibles and proposed to fund this by scrapping the entire development cooperation budget.

She joined a think tank advocating a Dutch withdrawal from the European Union in 2019, and she co-founded the alternative media broadcasting association Ongehoord Nederland (ON!) in 2020. She served as an administrator and correspondent of its , a -themed news broadcast that was an alternative to Het Sinterklaasjournaal after it stopped including the blackface character . During the COVID-19 pandemic, Klever spread anti-vaccine messaging, and she shared social media posts promoting the Great Reset conspiracy theory. "Development cooperation" was changed to "development" in the title. During her confirmation hearing, she was asked about her sharing a social media post about , referring to the far-right Great Replacement conspiracy theory. Klever refused to distance herself from the term as she had not used it, and she called it a "factual description of a demographic trend". A motion of no confidence against her by GroenLinks–PvdA did not receive a majority during the cabinet's inaugural debate.

Klever was tasked with executing a budget cut of €2.4 billion per year starting in 2027 that was agreed on in the coalition agreement. Klever announced that subsidies for non-governmental organization in the period 2026–2030 would be decreased from €1.4 billion to €0.4 billion, prioritizing organizations with alternative sources of funding. During cabinet negotiations for the 2025 budget, Klever requested additional funds in line with economic growth. However, Minister of Finance Eelco Heinen decided to decouple the development aid budget from the size of the economy, which had been in place for decades.

She explored the idea of sheltering rejected African asylum seekers in Uganda in exchange for financial compensation. However, after a trip by Klever to the country, Ugandan foreign affairs minister Jeje Odongo denied that the topic had been discussed.

Personal life Klever is the daughter of Wim Klever, a philosopher specialized in Baruch Spinoza. As of 2024, she lived with her husband in Ermelo, Gelderland.