Dr Bryce Wilkinson: New Zealand’s response to Trump’s tariffs is encouraging

Last week, Donald Trump slapped a 15% tariff on New Zealand exports. An annual nine billion dollars of our goods will now face higher barriers entering the US market. Our beef, wine and dairy exporters will suffer.

Australia got only a 10% slap. Labour calls this difference a “major fail”.

Point of Order: Europe is in trouble – and it’s not just trade

Donald Trump thinks that US tariff negotiations with the European Union are going nowhere, the Daily Telegraph reports, and plans to impose a 50% tariff within the week.

It looks like the EU is not minded to follow the UK’s post-Brexit lead: accept a U.S. revenue tariff, tackle a few regulatory problems, and gesture towards future convergence (endless talks, always on the back foot).

Peter Dunne: Trump's tariffs

The government’s relief that New Zealand seems to have escaped a bullet regarding President Trump’s tariffs may be short lived. New Zealand exporters will face a flat 10 percent tariff on goods sent to the United States, but that is at the lower end of the scale of tariffs Trump has imposed on other countries.

However, that may not be where New Zealand’s tariff travails end, if history and the experience of other countries is any guide.

Dr Oliver Hartwich: The devilish paradox of Trump’s legacy in Europe

There is a devil in European literature who claims an unexpected virtue: he intends evil but accomplishes good.

In Goethe’s masterpiece “Faust,” Mephistopheles – essentially the devil – tells us: “I am part of that power which eternally wills evil and eternally works good.”

This paradox from German literature’s greatest work perfectly captures a surprising phenomenon unfolding today: Donald Trump may be the Mephistopheles that Europe did not know it needed.

Professor Robert MacCulloch: Free Trade Hypocrites Becoming More Hysterical by the Day....

US Senator Bernie Sanders Symbolizes The Free Trade Hypocrites Becoming More Hysterical by the Day

Want to know why the US left-wingers are looking stupid? This past week none other than US Democratic Senator Bernie Sanders has been hitting the streets of America trying to raise a revolution against the tariffs being implemented by the Trump White House. Our own leaders, the two Chris', Hipkins and Luxon, should join him. After all, as NZ First Leader and Foreign Minister Winston Peters explained, they have become increasingly hysterical on the topic.

Mike's Minute: Free trade will survive these tariffs

Keir Starmer is fast becoming a new political hero.

For a bloke who stumbled into office not on his brilliance or a nationwide passion for the Labour Party, but more because the Tories had spent 14 years slowly messing the place up, he turns out to be quite the operator.

Professor Robert MacCulloch: Hipkins pretends on Newstalk that he's pro-free trade & pro-business

Labour Leader Hipkins pretends on Newstalk that he's pro-free trade & pro-business (to get Auckland's vote).

The guy who locked down Auckland indefinitely during the pandemic, closed our borders so not one foreigner could enter, and even Kiwis with NZ passports based overseas for that matter; who trashed the future of a generation of our school children; who ordered the Covid vaccine late, though would never admit it; and who caused high inflation & stuffed the NZ economy - now goes on Radio to accuse US President Trump of not being an internationalist and out of order for his tariffs. How ironic for this centralizing, anti-capitalist, shut-the-borders leader of the Labour Party to falsely pretend he hates barriers between countries. Hipkins says NZ has pretty much offered tariff-free access to everyone who's asked for it "and was willing to reciprocate". US exporters "trying to get into NZ face no barriers at all", he adds. So lets see how well his embrace of free trade actually stacks up.

David Farrar: Biden’s tariffs disastrous for the environment and economy

AP reports:

President Joe Biden slapped major new tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, advanced batteries, solar cells, steel, aluminum and medical equipment on Tuesday, taking potshots at Donald Trump along the way as he embraced a strategy that’s increasing friction between the world’s two largest economies.

These tariffs are massive. They include:

Ele Ludemann: Who chooses best?

Who chooses best – the government or people?

Free trade is under increasing threats as countries become more protectionist.

People who think this is good don’t understand that trade restrictions empower the state and disempower people.

Rahul Sen: India could soon be the world’s third biggest economy

NZ needs to build the trade relationship urgently

India’s economy has emerged as a bright spot in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. Currently the fifth largest global economy, it is predicted to become the third largest by 2030.

It is expected India will contribute 15.4% to global economic growth this year, second only to China. Prioritising our trade and economic relationship with both countries should be a key goal for New Zealand.

Heather du Plessis-Allan: If meat and dairy aren't happy, it's a rubbish deal

 

Well, that’s a rubbish free trade deal.

I think we can accept that as fact given pretty much everyone who knows anything about what they’re talking about is unimpressed with it.

Meat and dairy have been shafted. There is nothing to celebrate in this for them.

Beef exporters are only allowed to provide 0.1 percent of the meat that Europeans eat.

Cheese exporters are only allowed to provide 0.14 percent of the cheese they eat.

Geoffrey Miller: Can Jacinda Ardern’s starpower save New Zealand’s free trade deal with the EU?

Jacinda Ardern will need to deploy every aspect of her starpower if she is to have any hope of rescuing New Zealand’s faltering free trade negotiations with the European Union (EU).

The Prime Minister has branded each of her four foreign trips so far this year as ‘trade missions’ – and the labelling will certainly ring true on her visit to Brussels this week.

On Thursday, Ardern will hold direct talks with Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the European Commission. The former German defence minister has become a familiar face on New Zealand television screens over the past few months, thanks to her repeated announcements on the EU’s support for Ukraine.

Mike Hosking: UK Free Trade deal a rare bright spot

 

Yet another reason to thank Boris Johnson and be grateful that there remain a few visionaries about the place that want us to prosper and succeed. 

By all accounts, our free trade deal with the UK is a winner. It's open and truly free, the hurdles remain few and far between. The gains we stand to make are enormous. 

It's a tangible example of what we envisaged when we entered into the world of free trading all those years ago under the previous Labour govt of David Lange and Sir Roger Douglas. We are the free trade pioneers and we deserve this level of success. 

Richard Epstein: Donald Trump’s Trade Travesty

The presidency of Donald Trump has been marked by a war between two totally inconsistent intellectual mindsets: his disastrous trade policy and his wise domestic policy. Let’s start with the good news first.

On the domestic front, Donald Trump has largely followed, to great positive effect, the classical liberal playbook, which spurs growth through a combination of low taxation and market deregulation. Under Trump’s leadership, removal of the government’s heavy foot from the throat of the economy has paid off. 

The key move was to junk the popular Keynesian paradigm with its flawed assumption that one or more low-interest economic stimulus programs could spend the United States back to prosperity. But these glorified transfer programs only take from Peter in order to pay Paul. Their net effect is virtually always negative.

Matt Ridley: Montesquieu's "sweet commerce" and Cobden's "God's diplomacy"

The “ultimatum game” is a fiendish invention of economists to test people’s selfishness. One player is asked to share a windfall of cash with another player, but the entire windfall is cancelled if the second player rejects the offer. How much should you share? 

When people from the Machiguenga tribe in Peru were asked to play this game, they behaved selfishly, wanting to share little of the windfall. Not far away, the Achuar in Ecuador were much more generous, offering almost half the money to the other player — which is roughly how people in the developed world react.

What explains the difference? 

Matt Ridley: Principles versus rules in free trade

Why does the European Union raise a tariff on coffee? It has no coffee industry to protect so the sole effect is to make coffee more expensive for all Europeans. 

Even where there is an industry to protect, protectionism hurts far more people than it helps. Last October the EU surreptitiously quintupled the tariff on imported oranges to 16 per cent to protect Spanish citrus producers against competition from South Africa and punish the rest of us. It imposes a tax of 4.7 per cent on imported umbrellas, 15 per cent on unicycles and 16.9 per cent on sports footwear.

Sylvain Charlebois from Canada: The End of Supply Management?

Canada’s supply management system is a textbook case for food sovereignty. But the social contract the system represents may need to be redrafted as we head toward North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) renegotiations.

Supply management is a social contract between farmers and consumers. Canada’s heavily-criticized quota regime for the dairy, egg and poultry industries was set up decades ago to protect strategic agricultural sectors by implementing high tariffs on imports. Farmers produce what the domestic market needs and we import very little.

Matt Ridley: Free trade agreements are easier if you keep them simple

The prime minister will soon press the button and launch Article 50 on its inexorable, ballistic trajectory towards impact in March 2019. From the political class here, let alone in Brussels, comes incessant pessimism about those two years: it will be fractious, we are not ready to negotiate, a trade agreement is all but impossible, the timetable is too tight, we’re going over a cliff.

This is mostly wishful thinking by those who want us to fail. A conversation last week with the former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott brought this home to me. When he became prime minister, Mr Abbott did something unusual. Noticing that his country’s trade negotiators had spent years meandering towards deals with China, Japan and other countries – enjoying room service in five-star hotels in different cities as they did so – he set them deadlines.

Matt Ridley: Britain's chance to be the global champion of free trade

The prime minister wants Britain to be “the most passionate, most consistent, most convincing advocate for free trade”. Under  either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton, and with world trade stagnating, it looks as if the job is increasingly likely to be vacant in March 2019, so Britain has both a vital duty and a golden opportunity. It worked for us before.

Next year sees the 200th anniversary of David Ricardo’s insight of “comparative advantage” — the counterintuitive idea that trade benefits “uncompetitive” countries as much as efficient ones.

Matt Ridley from the UK: The case against mercantilism

The late Sir George Martin created substantial British exports. Had the import of his music to America been banned to save the jobs of US musicians, Britain would have missed out on some revenue but the American consumer would have been the biggest loser, missing out on the music. Trade benefits the importing country: that’s why it happens.

Frankly, we might as well be living in the 17th century, so antiquated are our current debates over trade, both here over Brexit and in America over the presidential nominations. Many current assumptions about trade were debunked more than two hundred years ago and then tested to destruction in the mid-19th century.