Whatever the damage, especially to the British economy, Brexit has done us a service by illustrating the complexity of trade. Brexit is the only example we have of two closely integrated sophisticated economies severing trading ties. The European Union and Britain still do not have tariffs or import quotas between them – the stuff of…
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Does the US need to strike a grand bargain with like-minded countries to pool their efforts? What does this tell us about today’s global politics? Perhaps the most remarkable editorial of last year was the cover leader of the London Economist on 19 November 2020. Shortly after Joe Biden was elected president, that stalwart of…
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The deed is done, the doers undone Had I been a Brit, I would have voted ‘Remain’ rather than Brexit (or ‘Leave’). Instead, I have been bemused by the comic theatre of British politics, fascinated by what the Brits actual think and professionally interested by the revelations of the complexity of the interactions between Britain…
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This was submitted to a British news publication in late December, but was not published. Brexit is a great puzzle to New Zealanders. Britain and New Zealand are affectionate cousins with common ancestors back in the nineteenth century. We have gone our own ways; even so we have views of the other’s ways. New Zealand’s…
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The growth of farm output may be slowing. Specialty cheeses show an alternative strategy of further post-farmgate processing. Land for farming ran out in the 1950s. Farm production intensified. We shifted from more dollars of farm output by using more land to getting more dollars per unit of land. Among the challenges we had was…
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Extracted from a paper delivered to Wellington South Rotary; 22 March 1. The US is No Longer The International Hegemon There have been only two global hegemons – states with political, economic and military predominance or control over all others.. One was Britain in the nineteenth century. It was replaced by the US from about…
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Paper to Wellington South Rotary; 22 March, 2017 Thankyou for the invitation to talk about contemporary world economy. I am not going to give a blow-by-blow account of the challenges New Zealand currently faces; instead I am going to place them in a broad context. What I am arguing – I am uncertain, of course…
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This is a follow up ‘Brentry: How New Zealand Coped’, setting out some of the challenges which face New Zealand today. The strategic view that Britain needs to be in the EU remains universal among New Zealand strategists. However the Leaves did not vote geopolitically but on domestic considerations including, apparently, resentment of immigration and…
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This is based on a note that I prepared for a journalist. It is a lead into the next column which is on ‘Brexit: How New Zealand Might Cope’. New Zealand has an unusual situation in the world economy. Despite being among the affluent economies, its success is vitally dependent upon the export of some…
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Although completed a decade ago, Tony Judt’s history of postwar Europe presaged some of the challenges that it faces today. Shortly after the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989, one of our greatest contemporary historians Tony Judt resolved to write a book to sort his thinking out. It took fifteen years, but the resulting Postwar:…
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Can Trump wreck the world trading system? New Zealand is such a small country that it is very easy to be internationally bullied. Much of our diplomatic effort aims to minimise such bullying, but fear of it lurks behind concerns about what a Trump administration might do, not only to us but the rest of…
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Paper to the Fabian Society, 12 October, 2016 While we continue to chew over the carcass of the Fourth Labour Government – the Lange-Douglas one – we pay little attention to the subsequent Fifth Labour Government. Yet the Clark-Cullen one is greatly shaping the current Labour Opposition and the current National Government. It will,…
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We don’t need to refresh trade policy; we need to rethink how best to engage with the world in the context of increasing globalisation. The Government is ‘refreshing’ its international trade strategy. Refresh is a euphemism. It ought to overhaul it. Here are some guidelines; I begin with the overarching framework. The context is globalisation…
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Our nearest neighbour, New Caledonia, has a very different political economy. Will it vote for full independence from France in 2018 – also leaving the European Union? New Zealand shares a continent with the European Union. Admittedly 93 percent of Zealandia is submerged beneath the Pacific Ocean but at its most north-western are the islands…
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Too much of pop-economics is misleading to the point close to being lying. No wonder there is a widespread rejection of it by the populace. Journalists and other populisers get away with an economics which does not quite lie, but is often very misleading. This applies to Brexit, but let’s start off with the TPPA…
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It is unclear why anyone is voting for Britain leaving the EU nor, in many cases, why they are voting for remain. What are the possible alternatives? How is Britain or New Zealand to function in an increasingly globalised world. As I put up this column, the Brits are about to vote on Brexit –…
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The short answer is all trade reduces sovereignty to some extent. The TPPA is no exception, but its effect is probably small. Allow that we had to give away something, such as increased copyright extensions, for better access for our exports; the real issue for us in the TPPA is that it reduces ‘sovereignty’. To…
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A key issue may not be what is in the TPPA, but that by not adopting it we may ruin the other international agreements we are pursuing. In the 1960s I was an active member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. It was a moral crusade with unrealisable objectives such as withdrawal from SEATO (a…
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Given a long history of numerous trade agreements, why has the public become especially concerned about the TPP? At a recent public meeting, a retired Secretary of Foreign Affairs pointed out that although he had been involved in negotiating many free trade agreements, the TPP was the first one about which the public had showed…
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While TPP – any trade deal – compromises sovereignty it does not mean we cannot respond constructively to unsatisfactory aspects such as those involving intellectual property. The stupidest thing said about the TPP deal – thus far – is the claim that it does not reduce New Zealand’s sovereignty. Of course it does. Agreeing to…
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