Trading Up

Hours after Europe hit a range of US products with retaliatory tariffs, the EU’s trade commissioner was selling the benefits of the free exchange of goods.

- Pattrick Smellie

Think “trade negotiations” and it’s a fair bet what comes to mind is not a Scandinavian woman in a funky dress and biker-chick boots joining in a guitar-backed waiata with a big smile on her face.

That, however, is the image that the European Union Trade Commissioner, Cecilia Malmström, presented during a whirlwind visit in June, when she was the centrepiece of Trade Minister David Parker’s strategy to make the left love free trade again.

Parker and Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern blindsided their support base by helping revive a revamped Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) at the Apec meeting in Vietnam in November.

It was Ardern’s first outing on the global stage, and a sign that restoration of New Zealand’s traditionally bipartisan approach to so-called free-trade agreements (FTAs) would be a priority for the new coalition government.

They made clear, though, that any new FTAs would have to be done differently: out would go the secrecy of the TPPA negotiations; in would come the kind of transparent approach that the European Union has already adopted.

That strategy has coincided with Europe’s seeking new and improved relationships to shore up its interests in a world where old friends and allies the US and Britain, are withdrawing behind their own borders, while new economic and political forces – China in particular – are on the rise.

The message for a crowd gathered to hear Malmström in a lecture room 16 floors above Wakefield St on the AUT campus in central Auckland was that Europe is eager to talk trade and our Government is willing to bring critics to the table.

As if to emphasise that point, Council of Trade Unions kaumÄtua Robert Reid and former Green MP and trade-pact sceptic Barry Coates were among the first to pose questions.