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- Pacific.scoop.co.nz - http://pacific.scoop.co.nz - Clinton comes bearing a poisoned chalice, but calls off Pacific trip Posted By Rua On January 15, 2010 @ 8:37 am In Articles, Hawaii, NZ, Palau, Papua New Guinea | No Comments Hillary Clinton speaking in Hawaii before cancelling the PNG, NZ and Australian legs of the Pacific trip. Photo: AFP Pacific Scoop: Hillary Clinton was scheduled to visit New Zealand this weekend but that has now been postponed [2] because of the devastating Haiti earthquake and her need to get back to the United States in response to it. Her plane was en route from Hawaii to Papua New Guinea when she made the decision to abort her Pacific trip [3] and go home immediately. A major agenda item on that trip was to have been PACER Plus [4], ie. the expansion of the Pacific Agreement on Closer Economic Relations. She has said that she will reschedule her New Zealand visit as soon as possible. Clinton may not now be coming this weekend but negotiations will commence in March for the US to join an expanded Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership (currently comprising NZ, Chile, Brunei, and Singapore, commonly known as the P4 Agreement), with 2011 as the target to seal the deal. This will be used as the backdoor means to secure a US/NZ Free Trade Agreement. That would be catastrophic for any remaining economic sovereignty that New Zealand has. CAFCA [5] says this not because we are "anti-American". All such FTAs – such as with the existing P4 partners, or the more recent ones with Malaysia, the Gulf States and Hong Kong – pose the same threat to a greater or lesser degree. And our opposition to them is not because of "xenophobia" but for well founded grounds that they simply enmesh NZ more and more tightly in a cobweb of transnational corporate control. Recipe for disaster A full blown US FTA will: * Remove any remaining "restrictions" on foreign investment, as the US regards NZ's (purely token) oversight regime as "discriminating" against US transnational corporations, even though the government has promised to * push up the price of medicines by potentially hundreds of millions of dollars a year by attacking Pharmac; * make access to digital recordings more expensive, and copying more restricted; * attack our GE controls and food labelling, and * weaken our controls on food imports where they might carry diseases. 'Free trade' In other words, they want the world's markets opened up to their products, while keeping their own heavily subsidised agribusiness sector fully or heavily protected from outside competitors. Both National and Labour myopically see a US FTA as being the Holy Grail of their adherence to the cargo cult of "free trade". It's actually a poisoned chalice and it will be New Zealand which will be poisoned by it. The other side of the coin is that the US will be asking NZ to take a bigger role in the American war in Afghanistan. Older New Zealanders will remember the infamous "guns for butter" phrase of Sir Keith Holyoake, Prime Minister It means sending our soldiers to fight in US wars in order to, theoretically, gain trade access. Nothing much Kidding themselves Britain failed to persuade the US to liberalise trans-Atlantic air travel and, almost on the day when British commandoes joined the fighting in Afghanistan, the US imposed tariffs on imports of specialised British steel" (Press, 28 November 200). If this is the way that the US treats its "chief ally" when it comes to protecting its own trade and For full details, see the New Zealand Not For Sale [6] website – especially Bill Rosenberg's article "Who wins if we get a free trade deal with the US? [7]" Murray Horton is the secretary/organiser of CAFCA [5] (Campaign Against Foreign of Aotearoa). Article printed from Pacific.scoop.co.nz: http://pacific.scoop.co.nz URL to article: http://pacific.scoop.co.nz/2010/01/clinton-comes-bearing-a-poisoned-chalice-but-calls-off-pacific-trip/ URLs in this post: [1] Image: http://pacific.scoop.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/hawaii_hillary_clinton_101014.jpg [2] postponed: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/wire/sns-ap-us-us-haiti-earthquake-clinton-gates,0,958998.story [3] abort her Pacific trip: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/13/AR2010011304283.html [4] PACER Plus: http://pacific.scoop.co.nz/2009/10/oxfam-warns-australia-nz-against-forcing-rigid-free-trade-deal-on-pacific/ [5] CAFCA: http://canterbury.cyberplace.org.nz/community/CAFCA/ [6] New Zealand Not For Sale: http://www.nznotforsale.org/ [7] "Who wins if we get a free trade deal with the US?: http://nznotforsale.wordpress.com/who-wins-if-we-get-a-free-trade-with-the- us/ Click here to print. Copyright © 2009 pacific. All rights reserved.
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Opinion – By Murray Horton
So it's a recipe for disaster to enter into an FTA with the biggest economy in the world, headed by a government that aggressively pushes the interests of American Big Business (there is a seamless flow between the US government
and US Big Business, as is evidenced by the trillion dollar bailout of the mega-greedy financial sector, a textbook example of socialism for the rich).
further "liberalise" the Overseas Investment Act, a law which is in danger of being liberalised to death.
It is always presented as a means of getting NZ agricultural products into the US market. Ask Australian sugar cane growers how successful they were in getting their product into the US under the US/Australia FTA. The Americans
have a simple policy when it comes to "free trade" – do as they say, not as they do.
during our involvement in the Vietnam War.
seems to have changed in the ensuing 40 years (except now it is "guns for milk", as the NZ government's trade policy is driven by a single minded focus on serving Fonterra's interests).
People who kid themselves that "we" stand to gain from a Free Trade Agreement with the US would be wise to reflect on the rueful words of Sir Christopher Meyer, Britain's Ambassador to the US in the runup to the 2003 US/UK invasion of Iraq. Speaking to the current public Inquiry into Britain's part in that invasion and war: "Meyer expressed frustration that Britain was unable to gain much diplomatic leverage from its position as the US' chief ally.
economic interests, how do you think little old NZ will get on?
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