Retail NZ is loving the look of the EU, who this month started a new tariff on cheap goods.
It's three euro per package for anything under 150 euros.
It's aimed at Temu and co.
It's an easy argument to make because who likes Temu? Who likes cheap, nasty, tacky, plastic-y stuff that pollutes the world and is made in mass factories, paying people dirt wages, if not slave wages? But the answer is, apparently, heaps of us.
Nothing sells a product to more people, more often, than a cheap price tag and that is why China is a powerhouse and that is why your Temu's have conquered the world.
So Retail NZ wants us to "do an EU" and tariff the same way.
The trouble is we are free traders. We basically invented free trade, we are good at free trade, and in terms of doing business with the world, no one operates an easier-access marketplace than us.
And boy have we, and we are, doing well out of it. Given that, you can't then go and be something else when it suits you.
Tariffs are poison because for every person you protect, someone else picks up the bill. And for every tariff you generate, you invite another player to generate one back.
We are the luckiest of consumers right now because we have lived through a moment in history where tariffs and their destructive outreaches have been on full display with thanks to the US President.
For a while there it looked like the free trade train that had built up a serious head of steam over the past 50 years was in danger of being completely derailed. The US unilaterally and randomly applied numbers to goods pulled out of a hat.
The Supreme Court quelled it. It's still not over, but Trump is going back and forth.
As a result, normal-ish business will be resumed with a Rubio, Vance, or Newsom-type White House.
In the meantime, as we revel in our continually record-breaking revenue streams from beef and lamb and kiwifruit to India, the US, China, and the EU, it's no time to be sending mixed messages on the way we conduct business.
Retail NZ – back in your box.
Mike Hosking is a New Zealand television and radio broadcaster. He currently hosts The Mike Hosking Breakfast show on NewstalkZB on weekday mornings - where this article was sourced.
Nothing sells a product to more people, more often, than a cheap price tag and that is why China is a powerhouse and that is why your Temu's have conquered the world.
So Retail NZ wants us to "do an EU" and tariff the same way.
The trouble is we are free traders. We basically invented free trade, we are good at free trade, and in terms of doing business with the world, no one operates an easier-access marketplace than us.
And boy have we, and we are, doing well out of it. Given that, you can't then go and be something else when it suits you.
Tariffs are poison because for every person you protect, someone else picks up the bill. And for every tariff you generate, you invite another player to generate one back.
We are the luckiest of consumers right now because we have lived through a moment in history where tariffs and their destructive outreaches have been on full display with thanks to the US President.
For a while there it looked like the free trade train that had built up a serious head of steam over the past 50 years was in danger of being completely derailed. The US unilaterally and randomly applied numbers to goods pulled out of a hat.
The Supreme Court quelled it. It's still not over, but Trump is going back and forth.
As a result, normal-ish business will be resumed with a Rubio, Vance, or Newsom-type White House.
In the meantime, as we revel in our continually record-breaking revenue streams from beef and lamb and kiwifruit to India, the US, China, and the EU, it's no time to be sending mixed messages on the way we conduct business.
Retail NZ – back in your box.
Mike Hosking is a New Zealand television and radio broadcaster. He currently hosts The Mike Hosking Breakfast show on NewstalkZB on weekday mornings - where this article was sourced.
6 comments:
Actually Mike the trade war was one of the best things to happen to the USA - jobs are booming income is booming and us manufacturing is booming
Sometimes I think you suffer from tds
The retailers here are right
Plus all transactions should include a provision for temu to collect and transfer to the nz govt gst
Good on them
Never trusted that Adam Smith. Free markets? What’s that bought us in the last 250 years? (Apart from the greatest flourishing, reduction in poverty, and increase in lifespan in human history) And Elon Musk. Go Elon!
It is correct to say we are big on free trade. Offering it to all and sundry, no matter how they respond in return.
It must be the reason our economy is robust and growing.
Regarding Anon 5.54's comments, when reporting on the current US job market, the Associated Press said on 3 July "The figures suggest businesses remain wary of the economy’s health, with inflation at a three-year high and consumer confidence near post-pandemic lows. The job market has been stuck in a “low-hire, low-fire” rut in which the employed enjoy some job security with layoffs low, but those out of work are struggling to get hired. Strong hiring in the spring raised hopes the economy was escaping that dynamic, but Thursday’s report suggests job gains are still muted." A trawl through any reputable news source will reveal the same position.
So how does that translate into Anon 5.25's assertion that "jobs are booming"?
And maybe some incomes are booming (whatever that means), as s/he asserts, but the real measure of Trump's success should be the movement in disposable incomes. And that's not pretty. After inflation, the increased price of fuel, the increase in health insurance premiums and the reduction in social welfare benefits, all caused by Trump's policies, millions of Americans face reductions in their disposable income, no matter what may be happening to their earned income. That might well be regarded as a ka-boom, not a boom.
And if manufacturing is booming, that's because Trump inherited an economy from Biden that was already booming. The real question is how much of a bow-wave tariffs have created to slow manufacturing down and stop it reaching its potential under Trump? Arguably, any growth is in spite of Trump's illegal tariffs, not because of them.
TDS? No, just facts.
Oh and by the way, if Anon 5.24 had bothered to check, s/he would have discovered that where goods are sold online to a New Zealand customer by an overseas supplier, and the supplier's turnover exceeds the $60,000 registration threshold, it must collect GST on the selling price and pay it to the IRD. Just another fact.
Tarrifs are necessary to save some local industries from destruction, like the peach growers. China uses price wars to put foreign nations local industries out of business. It is a form of economic warfare and the only thing that is saving the US auto industry and the European auto industry is tarifs and import bans.
Tariffs will not help NZ in any way. The retailers just want to import Temu’s cheap plasticy stuff and sell it themselves. How’s this going to improve NZ productivity?
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