Dann on TPP

Herald business editor Liam Dann writes:

Helen Clark, who as Prime Minister kicked off the trade talks that evolved into the TPP, doesn’t seem to think so.

Last month she told New Zealand media in New York: “What always haunts a Prime Minister is: ‘Will there be a series of trade blocs develop that you are not part of?’ Because that is unthinkable for New Zealand as an export-oriented, small trading nation.

“So of course New Zealand has to be in on the action with the TPP and go for the very best deal it can.”

Clark’s words must seem brutally pragmatic to many of those still clinging to the notion that New Zealand should walk away from the TPP.

But her point seems to be that the bar for not signing up to this trade deal would have to be extremely high.

She was talking before the agreement was signed but one doubts the final text will have changed her stance.

It is hard to see any deal breaker in the detail so far which would justify New Zealand isolating itself from a trading block that represents 40 per cent of global GDP.

We’d be the laughing stock of the world to walk away from a deal we spent seven years negotiating.

This is problematic for Labour if it remains opposed to this deal based on specific points of detail.

And this has raised the prospect that Labour may oppose it on ideological grounds.

That might seem a populist approach when it comes to Facebook clicks, but would put the party into serious conflict with the current realities of the New Zealand economy.

As a tiny country, New Zealand is considerably less well placed to go down an isolationist path than, say, the UK under a Jeremy Corbyn-led Labour Government.

It would be an almost revolutionary position for a major political party to take here.

Vietnam – hardly an easy target for US imperialism – is set to sign the deal.

It would seem strange, I think, to see the New Zealand Labour Party taking a harder ideological stance than the Communist Party in Hanoi.

Sadly, it is quite possible.