[asia-apec 1154] NZ: Editorial - Silence of the lambs

[Gatt Watchdog]

NZ Listener, June 12 1999
Editorial
By Finlay Macdonald

Silence of the lambs

Dear President Clinton,
I realise you're terribly busy, what with deciding which sovereign
state to bomb next and fending off the latest allegations of
sexual impropriety, but I hope you really have taken the time to
listen to that nice, well-meaning Lockwood Smith, and to Jenny
Shipley, too, and I hope your ambassador has passed on a message
from the farmers who protested outside your embassy, because we
jolly well mean what we say about free trade.  New Zeland hasn't
spent the last 15 years taking US economic rhetoric literally just
to have you whack a tariff on our lamb exports, you know.  I mean
some of the brightest minds of their generation have built
careers out of swallowing and parroting the dogma that spews out
of your think-tanks and government departments.  The least you
could do is let them down easy!

You can be candid with me, though.  In fact, I've been doing a
little research of my own into your great nation's real commitment
to free trade, as opposed to its lip service, and I think you'll
agree that it's a tribute to the power of your public relations
industry that people here with lots of letters after their names
have taken it all so seriously.

Anyway, most people, if they were asked, would tell you that the
Gatt and Nafta are "free trade" agreements, but that's a bit of an
overstatement, isn't it?  From what I read, nearly half of what
qualifies as "trade" is actually the exchange of goods and
payments within individual US corporations.  About 40 percent of
US "exports" to Mexico, for instance, don't enter the Mexican
market, but their producers do benefit from cheaper labour rates,
lower environmental standards and so on.  You know, Mike Moore and
Lockwood Smith never talk about that kind of thing.

I know it's easy to dismiss critics of globalisation and
transnational corporations as lefty, anti-prosperity flakes, but
I'm really into growth and profits and all that, honestly I am.  I
just worry about those transnationals controlling one-third of the
world's private sector productive assets, that's all.  The UN
produced a study of this back in 1993, which said that the Gatt
increases the rights of transnationals to do business the way they
like it, but does nothing to impose formal codes of conduct on
them in return. This is all "advancing the economic integration of
the global economy on a scale and at a pace that is
unprecedented", apparently.  Quite a lot of people in New Zealand
think that's a good thing, by the way.

I know, I know, Nato's calling... What I'm getting at is that this
might all be okay if the proverbial playing field really was
level.  But the reality is that most industrialised nations have
become more, not less, protectionist in recent years.  Why, your
predecessor Ronald Reagan reportedly doubled import restrictions
to a level greater than all postwar administrations combined.  He
was also into a thing called "voluntary export restraint", which
some think-tank guru in Washington described as "the most
insidious form of protectionism" because it "raises prices,
reduces competition and reinforces cartel behaviour".  Hey, your
own Treasury Secretary was once quoted as saying, "I'm tired of a
level playing field.  We should tilt the playing field for US
businesses.  We should have done it 20 years ago."

I'm not telling you anything you don't know, I guess.  But don't
you find it amazing that people in New Zealand are acting all
surprised because you might make it tougher for our farmers to
sell their sheep meat in the US?  You'd think they would have
worked it out by now, wouldn't you, that the real trend in the
world is towards promoting economic development by ignoring, even
violating, pure free market lore.  I think some politicians here
might be waking up a bit, but it's hard to say.

In the meantime, can you please not give them too many surprises,
they're not used to it.  And you know how badly people take it
when you shatter their illusions.

Best wishes etc...


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