I'm normally all for free trade, the freer the better. But it doesn't work if it's only one-way. The proposed deal with China is one of those that won't work barring some unlikely concessions from the Chinese. There are lot of smaller issues like tariff equalization, but the big one is China's currency. The Chinese yuan's peg to the US dollar is effectively a 50% subsidy on exports to New Zealand (among other places) and an equivalent tariff against New Zealand exports. Somebody, any enterprising journalists out there, needs to ask some hard questions over at MOFAT about when and how the decision was made was to become an economic colony of China.
A related question is, since we don't have a military anymore, what we'll do when the Chinese navy escorts a bunch of trawlers (or dredgers, or survey vessels) into NZ's economic zone and announces they'll fish (or mine iron sands, or explore for oil) anywhere they damn well please. So what would we do about it? Complain to the UN?
1 comment:
They'd have o get past the USN first - and I don't see that happening anytime soon...
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