That was a surprise this morning, wasn’t it?
He's managed to finally sing a free trade deal with the Gulf States, that we have as a country been working on for nearly 20 years and got nowhere with.
And it’s not that we didn't’ try - Boy did we try! Do you remember the Saudi sheep deal.
Where we flew 900 pregnant ewes in the hold of a plane to Saudi Arabia. And where we spent millions of dollars setting up a farm for a sheik in the middle of the desert... about ten years ago?
We did that to try to get this deal done.
That was an epic amount of sucking up from us and it went nowhere. And yet... Todd McClay has managed to pull it off.
Apparently, according to media reports, he basically met his counterpart from the GCC a few months ago and said to the guy - We either do this deal or end negotiations. And so, we did the deal.
It’s lucrative.
These guys love quality and luxury. They've got money to spend. And we already have a strong foothold in that market, even without an FTA this is our 7th biggest export market.
Honesty... I wasn’t expecting Todd McClay to knock things out of the park like he has in the year he’s been the trade minster. He's done this, he put together the UAE free trade deal in the fastest time we’ve ever put together a free trade deal - 4 months, and he’s grinding it out with India trying to get that to work too.
This is impressive.
If I'm counting right, he’s now signed as many free trade deals in a year as the last Labour government did in six years in power.
Heather du Plessis-Allan is a journalist and commentator who hosts Newstalk ZB's Drive show HERE - where this article was sourced.
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