New Zealand Trade: a positive outlook: Phil Goff outlines recent trade developments and priorities for New Zealand.

• Author: Goff, Phil
• Position: Edited address to the Wellington Regional Chamber of Commerce, 27 February 2007 - Speech

It is a pleasure today to be able to note some positive news on the trade front. First, the World Trade Organisation's Doha negotiations have restarted following their suspension last July. Second, we have had some success in securing access in specific markets, we are continuing to push forward with trade negotiations with China and ASEAN and starting new negotiations with the six Gulf Cooperation Council states, and we are laying the groundwork in other countries where we would like an agreement such as Japan, Korea, the United States and the European Union. Third, Export Year 2007, a private sector--government partnership to boost our export performance, is underway.

The multilateral trade liberalisation system is still the best way for a small country such as New Zealand to deal with the trade issues we face--both tariff barriers and farm subsidies. It is also the best way to raise global incomes. The evidence shows that reforming trade can help lift people out of poverty. This is one of the key objectives of the Doha Round.

The year has begun with the WTO Doha Round negotiations back in business. The resumption of negotiations was announced following a trade ministers' meeting I attended in Davos at the end of January. There was at that meeting a sense that progress was being made, that the European Union and United States were now seriously talking to each other, and that the time was right for us to move the Round back into formal negotiations.

There are still tough issues ahead of us. We have to be careful not to under-estimate the scale of those difficulties. But getting the Doha Round up and running again is vital for New Zealand's trade interests. We will do all we can to get a deal.

Top-level meetings

Through January and February there have been top-level meetings between the Europeans and the Americans. The message from European and US political leaders has been: 'Get it done'. That has been followed through at negotiator level, both across the Atlantic and with Brazil and India.

We are now in a new phase in the negotiations. For the immediate future the emphasis is on bilateral discussions among the big four and a few others to build up some bilateral understandings on some workable numbers. The aim then is to do some 'reverse engineering', finding a formula that will deliver the numbers and feeding that into the regular Geneva negotiating process.

There was a cluster of these meetings among the big players in London in February. There is talk of follow-up at ministerial level within the same group in the near future. This could turn out to be the start of the end-game. What happens in the exchanges is critical for New Zealand. We want the majors to reach agreement because without that there is no overall outcome. But we want to make sure that our interests are taken into account in the process.

Key role

New Zealand will have a key role to play, given the need for any understandings agreed by the big players to be fed into the wider Geneva process--to be tested and turned into a text. First, we have put a lot of effort into staying alongside the key players. I have kept in touch with Pascal Lamy and with ministers from the G6 and other countries since the middle of last year, including visits to Oslo, Brussels and Berlin on the way to Davos.

We are also talking privately to key players at technical level about specific New Zealand interests. It is important that those interests are heard as critical judgments are being formed on elements of a deal. We have worked with New Zealand exporters to get a fix on our priorities across the negotiating agenda. We will pursue those interests, as work gets under way again in the Geneva negotiating groups.

We have made available our ambassador in Geneva, Crawford Falconer, to chair the agriculture negotiation. We have been active in behind-the-scenes work by small groups in such areas as environment, services and industrial goods and also as 'Friends of the Chair' and in an informal grouping called the Oslo process--countries with diverse interests but with a constructive desire to achieve a...