Krišjānis Kariņš

As child refugees, his parents, with their respective families, fled the Soviet re-occupation of Latvia in 1944, grew up, met and married in Sweden before migrating to the United States.

Arturs Krišjānis Kariņš (born 13 December 1964) is a Latvian politician who served as the prime minister of Latvia from 2019 until 2023.

A linguist and businessman by profession, he previously served as Latvia's minister of Economics and a Member of the European Parliament.

Born in Wilmington, Delaware, United States, to parents who had left Latvia during the Soviet occupation, he was active in the American Latvian community throughout his youth.

His father, Uldis, was a civil engineer who in 1973 founded the engineering, planning and surveying firm Karins and Associates in Delaware, which would later go on to acquire other companies in the Mid-Atlantic region.

According to Kariņš, he and his older sister were the only two ethnic Latvian children in their elementary school.

His family was active in Delaware's Latvian community, regularly attending Latvian church and Sunday school, singing in Latvian choirs, and attending and later working at Latvian summer camps including Garezers in Michigan.

Throughout his youth, Kariņš played guitar and drums with his Latvian friends in a band that traveled throughout the United States and played at events such as weddings.

He also took part in demonstrations in Washington, D.C., against the Soviet occupation.

After graduating from high school, Kariņš studied at the Münster Latvian Gymnasium in 1983.

Kariņš first visited Latvia in 1984 and he spent summers there until moving to the country full-time in 1997.

From 1984 to 1986, he studied at St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland, before switching to a linguistics program at the University of Pennsylvania where he graduated summa cum laude in 1988.

In 1990, he received a grant from the American government to take Russian language classes in Leningrad, and in 1994, he received another government scholarship to study pitch accents and to teach sociolinguistics courses as a guest lecturer at the University of Latvia.

In 1996, Kariņš finished a Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of Pennsylvania and specialized in the field of automatic speech recognition.

Soon after, he moved to Latvia, where he intended on teaching language but was denied a teaching position as an academic due to inexperience in teaching.

After graduating with a bachelor's degree summa cum laude and PhD in linguistics from the University of Pennsylvania, Kariņš moved to Latvia in 1997 and founded a frozen food business.

He was also briefly the president of an automobile and office supplies company called Formula from 1999 to 2000.

After serving as a deputy in Latvia's parliament (the Saeima), as Minister of Economics, and also as a Member of the European Parliament throughout the 2000s and 2010s, Kariņš was selected by New Unity to be its prime ministerial candidate in the 2018 Latvian parliamentary election.

In the early 2000s, Einars Repše invited Kariņš to take part in the founding of the New Era Party, and Kariņš helped write the party's original platform.

He helped found the New Era Party in 2002, which in 2011 merged with others to form the Unity Party (renamed New Unity in 2018).

Instead, he founded Lāču ledus, a producer and distributor of ice and frozen foods, that he led until 2002.

According to Kariņš, negative experiences working with the Latvian bureaucracy during his time in business was his original inspiration for joining Latvian politics.

He was elected to the Saeima on the party's ticket in October 2002, with New Era becoming the single largest party in parliament.

While in the Saeima, he served on the education, culture, and science committee as well as on the constitutional committee.

He also served as the chairman of the parliamentary faction of New Era from 2002 to 2004.

Upon the resignation of prime minister Einars Repše in early 2004, Kariņš was discussed as a candidate to become the next prime minister.

However, he was passed over by President Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga in favor of Indulis Emsis, and again in favor of Aigars Kalvitīs after Emsis's resignation a few months later.

He instead became Minister for Economics in the First Kalvītis cabinet from December 2004 to April 2006.

According to Kariņš, he had a contentious relationship with Kalvītis during his time as minister.

In April 2006, Kariņš was threatened with prosecution due to his relationship with a company that allegedly misused EU funds.

Although Kariņš initially refused to resign, his entire New Era party left the government on 6 April 2006 due to an ongoing conflict with Kalvītis and his People's Party.

Kariņš was re-elected to the Saeima on 7 October 2006.

Although New Era was tied for the second largest party in parliament with 18 seats, the party did not re-join Kalvītis's coalition and remained in opposition.

Following the election, New Unity was the smallest party elected to the 13th Saeima.

Following months of contentious negotiations in which leaders of the larger parties were unable to form a coalition, Kariņš was nominated by President Raimonds Vējonis in January 2019 as a compromise candidate to form a government.

He took office on 23 January 2019 at the head of a five-party coalition, and survived a 58–33 vote of no confidence on 11 April 2019.

During his tenure, he has led the country's response to the COVID-19 pandemic as well as the 2021 Belarus-European Union border crisis.

He anounced his resignation as prime minister on 14 August 2023 due to conflicts within the coalition lead by his party and left office upon election of his successor on 15 September 2023.

Kariņš was born in Wilmington, Delaware, United States, to a Latvian American family.

One of his teachers was Egils Levits, who was elected President of Latvia in 2019 a few months after Kariņš would become prime minister.