PM Jacinda Ardern’s message to President Joe Biden before US trip: Get on board with free trade
Amid the great struggle for power in the Indo-Pacific, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has reaffirmed what New Zealand thinks the United States needs to be. Not a greater security partner in a region that’s experiencing “assertiveness and aggression”, but a better economic one.
It’s a message Ardern has issued to the Biden administration before. But, in a speech to the US Business Summit in Auckland on Monday, and weeks before she travels to the US, it was entirely unambiguious: Get on board with free trade because, China has.
And the US offer has so far fallen short of expectations.
Ardern, in the speech, committed New Zealand to the recently announced and sparsely detailed US “Indo-Pacific Economic Framework” – which amounts to something of a US-led free trade deal, just without the free trade, for a region that already has such a deal.
That gagging sound you hear is Jacinda reading the neoliberal Mfat wishlist she was forced to regurgitate at the end of APEC last yearand in her message to Joe Biden this week!
The irony of having to lecture America on its Milton Friedman Cult of free markets would be hilarious if it didn’t enslave us to a Washington Consensus none of us consented to!
The Democrats have realised how far their free market dogma has collided with the aspirations of a working class who keep going backwards.
Trump understood that dynamic and that’s why the TPPA was dumped.
With the Democrats about to be destroyed in the mid terms because of the lack of economic traction vs culture war ammunition they keep handing to the Republicans, there is no fucking way they are opening their markets up to the things we are good at.
The last unchallenged bastion of NZ neoliberalism is the free trade zeal that stops nationalization of economic sovereignty. Jacinda is a globalist who supports transnational labour chains which exploit workers and locks us into corporate subservience.
This pandemic has shocked neoliberal supply chains and is a precursor to the constant state of external shocks that the climate crisis will generate.
Now is a time for economic self sufficiency NOT corporate globalism!
Begging America to give us access to their markets to wean us off our economic subservience to China is apparently preferable to building Fortress Aotearoa.
The geopolitical shock waves are constant now, the current political spectrum won’t be able to contain the coming storm no matter how much we beg America.
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People have missed a trick here. We have a 10B hole in our economy due to no tourism and ESL tertiary education. These industries will take 36 months to get back up to full stream. Our Glorious Leader (sorry Poor Man’s Gordon Brown) has finally realized at some stage we have to pay the ‘pissed against a wall cash’ back and are seeing some rather large cash holes developing.
This pleading is so we have more markets as the risks with China increase. And now we have a tapering off of demand from China as their lockdown madness shows no signs of abating.
An armada of Black Swans are at our doorstep.
Frank is a wage subsidy pissing cash against a wall? I would think latest export numbers don’t show a tapering off with China. There are certainly delays in the Shanghai port. You sounds like dildo baggins and his mysterious fiscal hole.
All this shit about government debt. Lets not spend anything and wonder why the infrastructure is not their or falling apart.
Snigger. So the Australian owned banks, the warehouse and LOL, Foodstuffs needed the wage subsidy did they. Yes some gave it back but not all.
We are spending more than we ever have – Poor man’s Gordon Brown put paid to that. It’s how we are spending. We are creating voluntary digital vaccine passports. FMD covid is past its pandemic phase and is now endemic. We can’t afford cancer drugs but we can afford a new digital vaccine passport.
Its the equivalent of a household being unable to afford the power but buying KFC for dinner. LOL fucking LOL.
Bollocks gagging, she’s a fully paid up disciple of the unflushable turd, George W’s little spoon and the second most successful Tory prime minister after Mrs T…
Jacinda is a Blairite to her absolute core! As such, free trade, globalisation, neoliberalism and most of all endlessly lying to the electorate are fundamental to her understanding of who she is and what she wants to achieve.
FUQ – who plays the role of that most Machiavellian of politicians in Jacinda’s Govt, ie who is our Peter Mandelson? It’s certainly not Trevor “Jackboot” Mallard! Although I suspect he believes he just might be.
Good call Martyn
The whole Free Trade schtick was a Clintoneque experiment that got the Chinese into the WTO where they could use and abuse its principles for their own benefit. (Clinton reportedly received mysterious campaign contributions from Asia) Trump reset US trade policy and Biden has maintained it, not that you’d hear that being said aloud in DC. But just as you said, it’s true.
What tin-pot little governments like we have in New Zealand need to realize is that international diplomacy is a multidimensional game. You want to trade with the USA? Then you have to rejoin ANZUS and pony up with a credible defence commitment.
“The Democrats have realised how far their free market dogma has collided with the aspirations of a working class who keep going backwards.”
Sadly Labour and Greens still do not understand this. Nor do they realise the rot to the middle class – in fact do everything to hide it from statistics.
Nor do Woke Wellington & twitter.policy woke understand the treaty – which prioritised ‘New Zealanders’ equality not just Maori .
It is also clear that there is zero mandate for NOT non New Zealanders to exploit and be given New Zealand assets or to conveniently give over a million people New Zealand permanent residency and citizenship status to get around the treaty .
Te Tiriti and democracy: The principle of equal representation
https://www.newsroom.co.nz/ideasroom/te-tiriti-and-democracy-part-5
Many Maori do not support woke segregation, woke spritulism and anti science.
Elizabeth Rata: The Decolonisation of Education in New Zealand
https://democracyproject.nz/2022/04/22/elizabeth-rata-the-decolonisation-of-education-in-new-zealand/
Worldwide woke ‘elites’ are destroying democracy.
Journalism is now dominated by highly educated elites who crusade about racial matters in order to generate outrage while protecting their own economic interests, says a US writer.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/afternoons/audio/2018837801/fears-woke-media-is-undermining-democracy
Is it official policy that Labour is more interested in propping up NZ big business (now mostly owned by overseas entities) instead of security in the region?
Big Wow on how neoliberalism has got so far in NZ.
Are they going to sell MP seats for $100k donations to ‘more valuable’ ethnic donors too like the Natz?
Trump dumping the TPPA was a good result for NZ.
Very little trade benefits at the expense of an increase in corporate powers.
I opposed and marched against the tppa in 2015/2016.
I reluctantly support it now because investor state disputes are gone and with over 20% of our trade and economic activity being with a bipolar and aggressive china we are at risk and anything that counters Chinese economic dominance in this region and gives us more options is good.
There will come a day very very soon almost any day now, when NZ will no longer be able to play both sides on china and China will heavily sanction out trade which will decimate NZ unless we have other baskets.
The tppa was never supposed to be this big in the first place it was supposed to be between NZ and three other countries in 2004 and now it’s a full on pacific rim trade deal.
If America and the wider pacific rim doesn’t trade with the Pacific region china absolutely will and it’s restrictions will terrify regional govts from saying boo against China.
Meanwhile nations with FTA’s with USA routinely criticize and bash the Yanks case in point Canadian Prime minister Chretian constantly attacking Bush over Iraq.
Trump didn’t understand the tppa either.
Trump opposed the TPPA because he saw some social media people freaking over it and cos Bernie was popular because of his opposition to it. As Bernie Sanders said “we both oppose it but unlike him I actually know what the tppa is”
I don’t like the TPPA but its a lot more preferable to have multiple baskets and income streams than having everything with China who could shut off trade at any moment and cripple NZ.
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