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Labour Does Something
The title alone is newsworthy because whatever Labour has done the last three years, it was mostly failing to achieve something. The thing they’ve done is actually really good, though the first five of the eight years working on this achievement were started and driven by the previous National Government.
Labour organised protests by tens of thousands nationwide against the TPPA prior to being appointed the Government in 2017. A trade agreement that even Donald Trump wouldn’t participate in, was gleefully signed by Labour after it was renamed CPTPP.
Fifteen nations, collectively worth one-third of global trade, signed the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership. Signatories include China, Japan, South Korea and the ten members of ASEAN. The free-trade agreement will see the progressive lowering of import tariffs on goods exported to RCEP countries.
Unsurprisingly, because the agreement has been signed by a Labour Government, there is virtually no public campaign against entering this agreement and the media have only unearthed It’s Our Future spokesman Edward Miller to offer an opposing opinion. The reason I’ve decided to cover this group’s opposition, in particular, is to highlight the economically illiterate arguments trotted out by the left to justify their insular world views.
“We’re seeing a huge secret agreement being negotiated where we don’t know what the risks are and from the economic modelling that we’ve seen there’s very little economic benefit to be gained.”
Leftist economic modelling should get a bad rap considering it is big government environmentalists who also use computer modelling to justify their claims of a coming planetary calamity that only socialism can fix (which would be a historic first in itself).
These agreements are negotiated in secret for good reason. It maximises New Zealand’s negotiating power. If you tell a buyer the lowest price you’re prepared to accept, you will receive the lowest price. That would be a terrible trade deal. Economic modelling of a secret agreement in which the commentator claims not to know the risks (and therefore the content of the agreement) is worthless and I doubt it even exists.
“So we don’t know why the government continues to do secret deals that are against our national interests.”
You don’t know the content of the agreement so you can’t honestly claim the deal is against New Zealand’s national interests. New Zealand is a net importer. We import more goods from overseas than we export. Lower tariffs on imports make products for New Zealand consumers cheaper to purchase. Lower tariffs on imports overseas making the retail price of New Zealand exports more competitive than they would be with an additional tax on top of the price. This is a win-win.
Miller said there had been no effective public consultation over the deal, some parts of which attack New Zealand’s national interests.
He has already inadvertently claimed not to know what is in the agreement.
One of the criticisms of the TPPA was that it reduced “our national sovereignty.” National sovereignty is not an inherently positive value. National sovereignty is unrestrained power held by the Government within its borders. The TPPA included provisions permitting foreign corporates to sue governments for legislation that negatively impacted the profitability of their trade with New Zealanders. That’s a good thing. I only wish all New Zealanders also had the power to take the government to court over badly written legislation to state their case as to why a court should overturn the law.
“The economic crisis that has come as a result of Covid is the biggest single economic event that we’ve had in New Zealand history.
“We need to preserve a policy space that will be able to ensure that we have a recovery that suits our people, our planet, our workers’ rights etceteras. We can’t guarantee that under RCEP.”
There is a serious grammatical flaw in the arguments made by left-wing policy wonks. I’m not saying this merely to be a grammar nazi. The serious flaw is the use of “our” in relationship to that which is not collectively owned.
- Our People
Slavery has been illegal in New Zealand for centuries. Miller doesn’t own me and I’d give him away if I were burdened with owning him.
- Our workers
While I have a management position, if I were to put myself into an economic class (only for argument’s sake), I’m certainly an employee and probably a worker. I sell my time to my employer but I’m not owned by my employer and not by some one-man band ranting nonsense that was dug up by a desperate reporter.
- Our planet
This is picky semantics here, so let’s try another common phrase, used mostly in relation to foreign investment.
- Our land
Is what economic xenophobes refer to when they want to stick their bloody sickles in other peoples free trade of private value for value. If I have a house that I wish to sell and I can find a buyer that wishes to pay more for it than anybody else, I don’t care what country they live in. Right up til the sale goes through, it is my land, not “our land”.
The day after it was announced Labour had signed the RCEP, a National MP tried a ‘Bish, please’ burn on Twitter saying it was hypocritical of Labour to support the deal when Labour MPs marched in 2016 against National’s plan to sign the TPPA.
I guess it just confirms my cynical view of the major parties. It doesn’t particularly matter which one wins because the end result hardly differs.
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