Herald and Hosking on TPP
The Herald editorial:
Looking back, it is hard to recall a greater diplomatic achievement than the comprehensive trade and investment agreement that will be signed by representatives of 12 countries in Auckland today. The post-war creation of the United Nations in which New Zealand Prime Minister Peter Fraser played a role may be as proud for those who remember it. The Trans-Pacific Partnership is directly in that tradition.
It represents another advance on the principles of the World Trade Organisation, formerly the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (Gatt) that was one of the multi-lateral institutions formed by nations seeking world peace and prosperity after two devastating wars.
Even 70 years ago, it proved harder to unite the world on rules for international business and trade than to establish a World Health Organisation and UN agencies for the likes of education and science. The Gatt did not become the WTO until the 1990s when just about all countries in the long communist experiment finally turned to capitalism for the prosperity the West enjoyed.
Now we just need Labour, Greens and NZ First to embrace capitalism again!
Mike Hosking writes:
Good morning and welcome to TPP signing day.
I know, I know, I know. We’ve thrashed this thing to death, but here’s your reality: It’s a done deal.
It will get signed today, the legislation will be passed, and all there is left to do is sit back and basically sees who’s right.
Will it be like every other free trade deal and open new markets, bring new opportunities and boost our wealth? Or are the doom merchants right and we’re heading for corporate armageddon, where we spend the rest of our lives in court and have our sovereignty whipped out from under us?
The really big question not many people seemed to ask in this whole debate was: Why would our Government sign us up to all this so-called trouble?
What Government in its right mind would take us down a path of disaster, and with it the political fallout?
Further, why would 11 other Governments do exactly the same thing?
If this is such a dastardly deal, how is it possible that a dozen countries all got sucked in and put their name to the sort of trouble and political mayhem the placard wavers are proclaiming?
12 Governments have signed it because they all stand to gain more from it than they lose. Trade is not a zero sum gain.
Long term, here’s Labour’s potential nightmare: Assuming those of us who like trade deals are right, as the numbers roll in, as the sales get made, and if this deal is like every other deal, it actually produces way more than the paper work ever indicated, think the China deal which is many times better than was initially thought possible.
As that all happens, Labour is going to be backed into a corner explaining just what it was it couldn’t see that the rest of us could.
The benefits of the China FTA have been much much greater than projected, If TPP goes the same way, Labour are going to look very foolish for campaigning against it.