Supporters say that is the kind of ambition a small trading nation needs. Sceptics say the policy may be trying to do too much at once.<\/p>\n
BusinessDesk senior correspondent Dileepa Fonseka told The Front Page<\/a> that there are different reasons to include each place on the party\u2019s wish list.<\/p>\n \u201cThey have all been identified as big markets. The total exports to them are not massive at the moment, about $1.8 billion. I think our exports to China are somewhere in the vicinity of $25 billion.<\/p>\n \u201cBut I guess they\u2019re saying from a low base you could potentially grow it. These countries have come up for different reasons in the past.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you think of somewhere like Brazil, you know Sao Paulo is the biggest urban area outside of Asia in terms of population. New Zealand is at a unique kind of geographic point where we\u2019re the shortest point between some of the big Chinese cities, if you\u2019re talking about Shanghai or Beijing and Sao Paulo,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Together, the priority markets represent almost 700 million people and more than US$5 trillion ($8.8t) in combined GDP.<\/p>\n A re-elected National Government will prioritise commencing negotiations with each of these seven markets in the next five years. The next term would see at least 23 trade missions with a \u201csharper focus on sector-specific missions\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cSo rather than it being focused on a particular country, it\u2019s gonna be focused on sectors. So it\u2019d be a trade mission about fintech.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ll have to wait and see how different this is in practice. Are they talking about having trade missions where it\u2019s multiple countries and you\u2019ve got people from one sector who are going to all those countries, and a politician is leading it, or is it some other model?\u201d Fonseka said.<\/p>\n National\u2019s trade policy is just as much about moving forward as it is about not falling behind, he said.<\/p>\n \u201cOne example where we\u2019ve suffered already is India. When India signed a free trade agreement with Australia, we were a big exporter.<\/p>\n \u201cWe suddenly saw big reductions in the amount that we were exporting to India, and Australia suddenly saw big increases in what it exported.<\/p>\n \u201cI think it\u2019s interesting because trade policy\u2019s diverging a little bit. There\u2019s offence, and there\u2019s defence, and you could argue that the India FTA is a little bit of both, but you could say that, to some extent, it is actually a defence because we\u2019re just trying to get back to the position we were at after somebody else negotiated a better agreement,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Labour\u2019s trade spokesman Damien O\u2019Connor said putting time constraints on trade negotiations was not a recipe for securing the best trade agreements.<\/p>\n \u201cThe ability of MFAT [the Ministry of Foreign Affairs], MPI [the Ministry for Primary Industries], and other core agencies to negotiate all of these agreements is pretty unrealistic. <\/p>\n \u201cLabour supports ambition, but it will be agreement by agreement as the resources are available,\u201d he told BusinessDesk.<\/p>\n Listen to the full episode<\/a> to hear more about:<\/p>\n Why these countries?Quantity versus qualityTrade missions and strategyPolicy as defence and offence.<\/p>\n The Front Page is a daily news podcast from the New Zealand Herald, available to listen to every weekday from 5pm. The podcast is presented by Chelsea Daniels, an Auckland-based journalist with a background in world news and crime\/justice reporting who joined NZME in 2016.<\/p>\n You can follow the podcast at iHeartRadio<\/a>, Apple Podcasts<\/a>, Spotify<\/a> or wherever you get your podcasts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Supporters say that is the kind of ambition a small trading nation needs. 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