ADDRESS TO THE HAWKE’S BAY BRANCH OF THE NZ INSTITUTE OF INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS

HAVELOCK NORTH, 19 FEBRUARY 2019
Stephen Jacobi
Executive Director, NZ International Business Forum

BACK TO THE FUTURE?  NEW ZEALAND, THE EUROPEAN UNION AND BRITAIN

Thanks to my friend Dick Grant for the kind invitation to speak to you today.

It’s great to be back in Hawke’s Bay again and talking with you about trade and economic opportunities, not this time with the United States, or China, or Japan, but with old friends in Europe.

So, are we no longer doing Asia, some of you may be tempted to ask?

I can assure you we most certainly are “doing Asia”, not just because of the enormous potential which is still on offer closer to home but because we live today in an increasingly complex and inter-dependent world, which requires us to pursue multiple opportunities at once and to mitigate risks across a range of markets.

The free trade agreement we are now pursuing with the European Union is part of that strategy, but it is not aimed at replacing markets in Asia but supplementing them and hopefully also giving rise to new productive investment which can help us develop new and profitable areas of business.

I’d like to examine this further with you by first looking more closely at the rationale for an FTA with the EU, then some of the potential problems, which might complicate the negotiation more than some politicians would like to admit, and finally and briefly, because I know you’ve recently heard from the British High Commissioner, at how Brexit might change our relationship with Britain.

Rationale of the NZ/EU FTA

It’s true that the idea of an NZ EU FTA has a sort of “back to the future” feel about it.

I began my career over thirty years ago working on trade with Europe including four years at the NZ Embassy in Paris.

Much of that time New Zealand faced an uphill battle to secure ongoing butter and sheepmeat access to Britain which involved annual visits by NZ Prime Ministers and Ministers to Brussels.

This matter was resolved in 1995 in the Uruguay Round of multilateral trade negotiations – or at least we thought it was, as it now rears its head again in the context of Brexit.

I’ll talk about that a little more in a moment, but, for now, let’s just reflect that those annual negotiations coloured our relations with the EU for many years, when we saw each other as competitors rather than partners.

This tended to obscure both the continuing economic importance of Europe even as we sought as an urgent matter of national economic survival to diversify our markets.

It is supremely ironic that today we hear similar calls for diversification – away from Asia and back to Europe!

Despite all this, the 28 (for the time being) member states of the European Union constitute a 510-million strong consumer market, ranking as our third-largest export destination, our second biggest supplier of imports, and our second-largest source of investment, with strong people-to-people linkages.

The rules governing our trade are however 30 years old and that puts our exporters at a distinct disadvantage especially when compared to competitors whose countries have concluded FTAs with the EU.

By the way it also puts EU exporters to New Zealand at a disadvantage as we have concluded FTAs with China and others which have resulted in a loss of market share for the EU especially in machinery, high tech manufacturing and a range of services.

More than one European diplomat in Wellington has lamented this sad state of affairs to me over the years – well, trade flows in both directions and this FTA negotiation is a chance to put that right.

New Zealand and Australia, which is negotiating separately with the EU, are almost the last cabs off the rank with the EU which has had a very active negotiating agenda over the years.

One wonders why it has taken so long – possibly because of lingering perceptions about being competitors rather than partners – but the good news is that the current EU leadership, as was made clear to the Prime Minister recently, sees this negotiation as a matter of priority.

Although it would be flattering to think so, this is not so much about the potential of our small domestic market – it has more to do with geo-politics and the opportunity this FTA gives to demonstrate openness to trade at a time when others are turning inwards, and to fashion some next generation commitments that can address today’s trade challenges.

For example, both New Zealand and the EU share a commitment to advancing “trade for all”: how, at a time of increasing scepticism about trade, how can we find ways of making trade work for people and addressing the specific needs of those groups who previously may have been left on the side-lines, including smaller business, women and in our case Maori.

Or reflecting new models of doing business, how can we address the needs of the digital economy, promoting cross border digital trade and e-commerce while respecting privacy and upholding cybersecurity?

That’s the rhetoric anyway but it does point to a more strategic context for this negotiation which will be helpful in Brussels when the rubber hits the road and we get down, as inevitably we will do, to the hard tacks of the negotiation.

From a New Zealand perspective, this negotiation is an opportunity also to promote and advance growing exports of high-quality food products including horticulture and wine, services such as tourism, education and creative sector exports, and well as high-tech and niche manufacturing.

The export boost at the New Zealand end is likely to be significant, with EU modelling suggesting the deal could add up to 0.5 percent to New Zealand’s GDP – a gain of up to $2 billion, giving rise to better jobs and living standards for New Zealanders.

But we should not see this simply in two way trade terms.

There is also huge scope to develop and deepen global value chains spanning from Europe through New Zealand into the Asia-Pacific incorporating the best of our complementary goods, services, capital, R&D, technology, ideas and innovation to service customers beyond both of our shores.

The EU is already a significant investor, although behind Australia, China and the United States – more can be done to boost the investment partnership and although the FTA will not at this stage include investment disciplines, it should help focus greater commercial attention on these wider possibilities.

Potential obstacles

Both governments are on record as saying the FTA should be able to be concluded quickly.

That would indeed be an achievement – I have never seen an FTA concluded quickly, but I certainly hope we can avoid the long, drawn-out process associated with the Trans Pacific Partnership for example.

Trade agreements take ages to conclude because they are complex – even more so when a number of countries are involved.

In the case of the EU, the European Commission negotiates on behalf of the Union but behind them, every step of the way, sit the 28 (or maybe 27) member states which all have their own interests to protect and advance. 

Some of those interests in the EU’s agricultural producing nations are not necessarily enthusiastic about the detail of what might be included in an FTA with New Zealand.

That’s why the preparatory steps towards the negotiation have literally taken years –  I visited Brussels in 2010 because we thought the negotiation was getting closer!

Hopefully these careful preparations will pay off because this negotiation will inevitably throw up some difficult issues.

Let me mention just three of them.

The first has to do with those tariff rate quotas for sheepmeat, beef and dairy products which are the legacy of New Zealand’s trade with Britain since colonial times and which after a generation of effort were finally settled and secured in the World Trade Organisation.

Brexit casts a big shadow over these important arrangements and the European Commission and the British Government have proposed that upon Brexit the TRQs will be split in half.

That poses a lot of difficulties for New Zealand exporters who have over a considerable period developed markets in both Britain and EU which they manage according to market trends and consumption patterns and in the light of flows of British products to the EU and European products to Britain.

Our exporters will lose considerable flexibility from the proposed splitting of the tariff rate quotas even though their right to export within the quota limits and rules has been guaranteed since 1995 – and I might add, effectively “bought and paid for” by New Zealand once already.

What’s more the European Commission and the British Government have in effect decided to proceed over the objections of New Zealand and other trading partners with similar arrangements – they risk opening up years of trade litigation in the WTO.

Now it has to be said these matters are not directly related to the FTA negotiation but they are very unhelpful for the effort to find a consensus around agricultural trade.

New Zealand for obvious reasons is wanting to expand on these tariff rate quotas but the EU and Britain are wanting to restrict them.

I’ll come back to this in a moment but New Zealand already paid a high price when Britain joined the European Community in 1973 – we are not minded to pay again now Britain wishes to leave.

A second issue also relates to agriculture.

The EU wishes New Zealand to adopt strict regulations about the way certain geographical names are used in international trade – not so much the use of names of wine regions like Champagne which is already restricted here, but names associated primarily with dairy products and some meat products. 

This new strict regime would not just apply in New Zealand, but also to our exports into other markets.

Think feta cheese, mozzarella, parmesan, even Cheddar.

New Zealand’s view is that these names have become generic rather than related to a certain geography.

Fonterra currently supplies large amounts of mozzarella cheese to China – every second pizza in China is covered with it, that’s a lot of pizza and a lot of cheese.

The EU has proposed the restriction of a large number of geographical indications which are presently being reviewed by our officials.

Some of them may not pose difficulties, others certainly will, but there is a principle at stake here and also significant commercial interests in trade with third countries.

The third potentially complex issue relates to digital trade.

Digital trade is the new black – all trade is rapidly becoming digital as goods are exchanged across e-commerce platforms and a wide variety of services are also delivered digitally to offshore consumers.

Think Alibaba for the former and as an example of the latter the way education or entertainment services are delivered by Internet.

This is a brave new world and there are distinctly different approaches to regulating issues like cross-border data flows, privacy and cybersecurity.

For example, on personal privacy, the EU approach, encapsulated in something called the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), is highly precautionary.

GDPR requires even the most basic data about EU citizens, such as an email address, to be protected to the nth degree by any business that collects it – even if that business is situated around the other side of the world. 

This potentially entails high added business costs and hassle. 

New Zealand and others grouped in the CPTPP prefer a lighter-handed and more finely-tuned approach that allows cross border data flows and hence is trade-friendly, while also protecting those important objectives of privacy and cybersecurity in a way that is actually fit for purpose.

The EU has already recognised that New Zealand has its own very high privacy standards and has granted us something called “data adequacy”.   

But resolving our differences across the broad sweep of digital trade issues in the FTA will be complicated. 

Given the rapidly evolving digital world, this is not an area that is hugely familiar to many in the business community and we will want to tread carefully.

It is precisely this sort of complexity which delays the conclusion of trade agreements despite the best intentions of governments.

The Brexit conundrum

I want to touch on Brexit only briefly and I most particularly don’t want to get drawn into the Brexit debate itself which is something that must be decided by the British people.

The first and most obvious point to make is that Britain, despite the changes of the last fifty years, remains very important to New Zealand in political, economic and cultural terms.

New Zealand has an interest in an orderly Brexit if indeed Brexit is what the British people wish to achieve.

And the converse also applies – we face risks, most particularly to trade and New Zealand businesses established in the UK if Brexit is disorderly.

The Brexit deal negotiated by Prime Minister May would have allowed the current arrangements to remain in place as they are now through to the end of 2020, while the detail of the future trade relationship with the EU was worked out. 

Without a departure deal, or other action being taken, Britain will crash out from the EU on 29 March. 

No comfy status quo through to the end of 2020 – just the “cliff edge” on 29 March, as some of the commentators have put it. 

This risks significant disruption to supply chains,  to customs clearance at British ports and quite likely a significant dent in the British economy.

The British Government is interested in a future FTA with New Zealand.

That is a welcome prospect from our point of view and as with the EU there are both opportunities and challenges from a future FTA.

If a hard Brexit occurs on 29 March, Britain is able and will indeed be eager to negotiate and implement a future FTA with New Zealand as soon as possible, bearing in mind of course these things are always more difficult than politicians would have you believe.

For as long however as Britain remains a member of the EU Customs Union, including under any transition arrangement or if the so-called backstop is initiated, it may negotiate but not implement an FTA.

For New Zealand therefore, under hard Brexit, we face potentially short to medium term pain with the prospect of a future FTA on offer.

Under soft Brexit we face short to medium term continuity but an extensive delay to realising our FTA ambitions.

Bear in mind too that as long as Britain remains a member of the EU and the Customs Union it remains bound by any FTA we negotiate with the EU.

Bets are on as to which is achieved first – complete Brexit or NZ’s FTA with the EU.

Conclusions

New Zealand’s relations with the European Union and Britain are long-standing, for the most part very warm and important in political, economic and cultural terms.

We have different approaches to agricultural trade and always have.  Our approach to digital trade also differs. 

On many other things we see the world in similar ways: that hopefully will provide a basis to see beyond our differences and work constructively to overcome them.

That may take time – these things always do and I’ll be the first person to applaud an early conclusion.

I’m also holding my breath for an outcome to Brexit which avoids a shock to the system any more than is necessary.

Future free trade agreements with the EU and eventually with Britain, if these can be achieved, provide a means not to go back to the future, but to look forward into the 21^st century and put the relationship with these old friends and partners on a new level.