While Jacinda Ardern is happy with progress made with the now renamed CPTPP trade agreement that continued to be negotiated parallel to the APEC, but opponents in New Zealand remain opponents. This is no surprise.
Vernon Small: Jacinda Ardern passes Apec summit test
Now it is back on track – albeit now delayed until the next time leaders can gather – and Ardern has set New Zealand up to sign the agreement formally known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
It transmogrified into the TPP-11 when President Donald Trump pulled the United States out in favour of bilateral trade deals – where New Zealand is vanishing far down the queue.
Perhaps fearing a countdown – TPP-10, 9, 8 – and apparently at the request of Canada, it has emerged from the crystalised emphasising its comprehensiveness and progressiveness.
It might be near unpronounceable as the CPTPP (Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for the Trans-Pacific Partnership), and loom on paper like an abbreviation of something from the former Soviet Union, but apparently the rebranding will help Trudeau sell it to his voters.
Signing the deal, but with some victories, would have been one of Ardern’s key aims. Not being blamed for its failure was probably another.
Critics in New Zealand were wishing for it to fail, but to no avail.
So it is no surprise her team have pushed hard to the media both messages; that any hold-ups are not of New Zealand’s making and that there have been significant wins on investor- state disputes settlement (ISDS) clauses. A “damned sight better” than it was, Ardern stressed as her crafted sound bite.
The TPP’s opponents at home have labelled it spin and are clearly disappointed Labour’s strong rhetoric did not see it reject the deal in its entirety.
Some aspects of the ISDS clauses have been narrowed and those “suspensions” have been put on ice, pending a possible US return.
In theory, New Zealand could veto them returning if the US insisted on the resurrection of the ISDS clauses and if our Government was prepared to stare down a post-Trump US and the other 10 CPTPP nations.
The incoming Government has managed to brush some fleas off the clauses, which Ardern called “a dog”, but she will be hoping the shift against them internationally will continue and that they will stay impounded when they are reviewed in three years time.
Ardern says it is now “a damn sight better than what we had when we started” and obviously wants it to happen. Not so the TPP opponents.
RNZ: TPP critics unmoved by new negotiation wins
The Council of Trade Unions (CTU) is still opposed to the Trans Pacific Partnership, despite the government claiming significant wins at the talks at APEC.
CTU secretary Sam Huggard said the agreement was still not good enough on labour laws or transparency.
He said he was keen to talk to the government about negotiating different types of trade deals in the future.
“Certainly the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions has shown a strong interest in its opposition to the TPPA for some years now, and that will continue.
“I guess what we’d like to do though is be part of a conversation with government about what a better agenda for trade could look like for working people.”
He said the TPP was structurally biased towards the commercial sector and downplayed issues such as health, safety and human rights.
And Jane Kelsey is also unsurprisingly still opposed – there is less chance of her supporting the TPP than there is of John Key making a political comeback or Andrew Little taking back the Labour leadership from Ardern.
On Saturday when there appeared to be a hiccup in the TPP negotiations Kelsey tried to start a campaign to pressure Canadian PM Justin Trudeau to ditch the deal: Help kill TPPA today by tweeting PM Trudeau
It’s not over yet. I don’t want to jump the gun. There will be more attempts to pull it off today.
The Japanese PM Abe is now trying to pressure Canada to finalise the agreement whilst they are in Vietnam. Can you please help us in tweeting PM Trudeau, Canadian Trade Minister and the Canadian Foreign Minister.
Canada refused to sign on at the last minute due to concerns around labour rights, Indigenous rights, cultural issues and gender equality.
Asking them to maintain their position on the #TPP and put culture, indigenous rights, women’s rights, and labour rights ahead of corporate interests.
That failed. Kelsey also posted yesterday: Labour largely endorses National’s TPPA, but it’s not all over. What now?
The bad news is that the Labour government has endorsed the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, with the suspension of a limited range of items, at the ministerial and leaders’ meetings in Da Nang, Viet Nam.
The ministerial statement released by the TPPA-11 has a catchy new branding for the deal: the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). No easy slogans there! But isn’t it interesting how something so toxic can simply be relabelled ‘progressive’?
I suspect Kelsey would see any sort of trade deal as toxic.
So, what happens now? There is no timeline for the next meeting of the CPTPP parties. That means there is now time for the new government to conduct in-depth consultations over its proposal to adopt the deal. It also needs to commission the robust analysis that Labour called for in opposition, independent of MFAT and consultants like the NZIER who basically rubber stamped the previous shonky modelling.
They need to make sure it uses realistic models that also cover the broader economic implications, especially for jobs and income distribution. If the economics don’t stack up, as Labour said they didn’t with the original TPPA-12, then they have no basis for arguing that the CPTPP should proceed.
Their independent review also needs to include non-economic impacts on environment, health, human rights and the Treaty of Waitangi.
But before it does that work to advance a deal they previously refused to ratify, the new government needs to give priority to its proposed full and participatory review of trade policy. All existing and future negotiations must be frozen until that is done.
As far as Kelsey is concerned it needs to be her way or no way.
However both Labour and National support the CPTPP largely as it is – that’s 102 seats out of the 120 in Parliament.
Minister of Trade David Parker is speaking on RNZ now, dismissing Kelsey’s criticisms.
Concerns and opposition dominate at The Standard: The TPP11 negotiations: ISDS provisions are gone – almost