Ed Said - TPP or not TPP

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Doing a little short-term farm-sitting recently and ferretting about for some reading material more substantial than Woman’s Weekly, I came across several issues of the Farming Weekly dated mid-2013. Being a farmer in a previous life I still feel a close affinity to the man on the land. Thumbing through I found a particular article of interest regarding the The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) which has been in the headlines recently and evoked some hostile reactions to its supposed benefits to New Zealand.

This alliance was first mooted in 2000 at the Brunei APEC meeting, then created as TPP in 2005 – a decade ago and still not finalised or ratified. A similar partnership signed by Brunei, Chile, Singapore, and New Zealand in 2006 joined, for a broader agreement in 2008, Australia, Canada, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, the United States, and Vietnam, bringing the total number of participating countries to 12.

Put simply, we will be a smaller fish in a bigger pool than most other treatys or pacts of which we have been a part. The stated goal of the TPP is to "enhance trade and investment among the TPP partner countries, to promote innovation, economic growth and development, and to support the creation and retention of jobs."

But this will effect such things as medicines and pharmaceuticals, copyright laws, restrictions on internet freedom and ac-cess to information, privatisation of state assets, foreign banks and insurance thus effecting almost all of us in some shape or form. More importantly we will be unable to throw our insignificant weight around against much larger opposition especial-ly in regard to our primary produce, our greatest earner.

Participating countries set the goal of wrapping up negotiations in 2012, but contentious issues (all of those named above) have caused negotiations to continue until it was hoped agreement could be reached by the end of 2013, the final round of negotiations by July 2015, three months ago.

Implementation of the TPP is one of the primary goals of the trade agenda of the Obama administration. This in itself is interesting because Obama needs to end his presidential reign having achieved at least one thing of note, but also interesting that although he may like to wield a big stick as chief of the ‘greatest nation on the face of the earth’, that great nation is almost entirely funded by Asian money.

Anyway, back to my reading… the crux of the article was that Federated Farmers Dairy section chairman Willy Leferink an-nounced “Japan and Canada feel strongly that opening their borders to foreign trade is a dangerous thing (for them) and I can understand where they are coming from” to which Fed Farmers president Bruce Willis replied reprimanding Leferink for his negative point of view. Quite laugha-ble that the situation then – two years ago – is precisely the situation now. Nothing has changed. Personally I hope it doesn’t. I think the TPP would create far more long-term stress for New Zealand than any threat from Chinese investment which is creating such a stir right now.

Don’t forget to put your clocks forward Saturday night then settle back and enjoy the extra daylight.

- Rob

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