Posted on 03/22/2018 9:08:44 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
The new tariffs announced by President Donald Trump have generated intense controversy.
With the debate ongoing, it might be useful to examine how other countries have dealt with similar policy debates in the past.
New Zealand now ranks third in The Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom and is one of the champions of economic freedom around the world. But it wasn’t always so.
In the mid-1980s, New Zealand was facing an economic crisis, with its domestic market and international trade both heavily regulated. Unemployment had reached 11 percent, and inflation was a sky-high 15 percent.
In response, the government of New Zealand began implementing revolutionary economic reforms, most significantly related to trade policy. It announced in 1987 a program that would reduce the tax on imports to under 20 percent by the year 1992.
By 1996, that tax was reduced further to under 10 percent, and by the end of 1999, about 95 percent of New Zealand’s tariffs were set at zero. Successive New Zealand governments, whether conservative or liberal, have maintained the strong commitment to free trade.
As the following chart illustrates, New Zealand’s adoption of less restrictive trade policies has corresponded to its climb up the trade freedom scale in the Index of Economic Freedom, and with a huge boost in per capita gross domestic product.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailysignal.com ...
LOL. Does New Zealand have some mightily industrial output to protect? Of course free trade make sense for them but it doesn’t mean it makes sense for everyone else.
There were more people in my high school then there are in New Zealand.
Also, does New Zealand have an extensive border that illegal aliens can walk across?
That must mean Trump's tariffs have to be good for America.
Not exactly, but there are more sheep in New Zealand than there are people, accounting for seven percent of its GDP. Don’t worry, they will do just fine.
New Zealand imports more than they export. Chief exports are wool and mutton - top export destinations in order: China (a whopping 6.5B), Australia (5.8B), USA (3.7B), Japan. Imports about 3.5B from the US. Whee Doggie!
One pony show. Hoof and mouth would wipe out their economy. Ranks 44th in world exports.
The average duty rate in the US is 2.5%. So what if it doubles, it’s the closest thing we will ever get to a national sales tax.
Trade deals, like NAFTA, are always great in the short term for the US but are long term disaster to the US. In the short term, until the other country attracts foreign (US) investment, it helps US companies. However, after a period of time, the balance flips and makes it more attractive for US companies to shift production to the foreign country and hurting US workers.
let’s take a look at NZ. facts:
NZ keeps a very tight control on immigrant labor.
NZ top exports (71%) are according to IMF.
At the more granular four-digit Harmonized Tariff System code level, New Zealand’s number 1 export product is cow’s milk followed by sheep or goat milk.
Dairy, eggs, honey: US$10.2 billion (27.6% of total exports)
Meat: $4.7 billion (12.7%)
Wood: $3.3 billion (9%)
Fruits, nuts: $1.9 billion (5.1%)
Beverages, spirits, vinegar: $1.4 billion (3.7%)
Fish: $1.1 billion (3.1%)
Cereal/milk preparations: $1.1 billion (2.9%)
Machinery including computers: $978.6 million (2.6%)
Modified starches, glues, enzymes: $884.6 million (2.4%)
NZ top trade partners are 1 china and 2 australia. then UK/EU.
NZ imports mostly cars and various machinery. Their imports recently spiked in 2016/2017 according to source.
so if they had tariffs, they must have been protecting farms and farm goods which compete directly with ours (can’t blame them for that)? unlikely. or their own machinery (china, computers?) maybe.
or more likely they were trying to keep importers of finished goods out and hurting their own retail industry and consumer market employment in the process? (the article cites improved employment. that could come from more imports.
anyway, it’s immediately clear that any parallel of this economy to the US is pretty bogus.
in short, this is an agrarian/socialist economy which is relatively small. it looks like it hasn’t got any real manufacturing base to protect anyway which is the reason for American tariffs.
the local farmers are protected from immigrant labor (a kind of labor tariff) probably because they don’t want to end up like us.
they trade mostly with china and australia so that is probably where the farm goods go and probably have always gone. no trade war there i think.
verdict: could investigate further but not convinced by NZ that so called “free trade” is good for us.
First it was Switzerland, now it is New Zealand. When will the One World Idiots learn that you can’t compare apples and watermelons! NZ is about the size of California. Texas is three times as big and has four times the population. NZ has a population of 4,749,598 as of 2018. It is not even in the running as far as an industrial economy is concerned. Compare its population with over 300 million Americans. This article is ridiculous!
That’s my point. Tariffs or not nobody would send milk and lamb to NZ. But it would be stupid for them to impose tariffs on machinery and other stuff they don’t build domestically.
At least they let in South African whites. They are extremely anal though. Very politically correct.
maybe back in the day, their gov’t had grandiose plans for developing a domestic machine industry or maybe a farm machine industry and so set up barriers to protect it. (the late 70’s and early 80’s were also hard times period for all of us. all boats rose with RR).
but NZ is clearly not Japan Inc. or command and control commie china with it’s bottomless pit of cheap labor.
they would of course have failed miserably if they tried that. no one can compete with American workers, natural resources, duplicate our know-how, free-enterprising culture and entrepreneurial spirit and faith based work-ethic. only our own gov’t’s misguided policies have managed to limit those.
maybe it’s simple as NZ finally saw the light and decided to just let ours and other’s accomplished industrial powers’ finished goods in. Just that alone could have boosted their economy vastly.
in any case, there’s no meat in this article (or apparently at Heritage these days). it’s just top level statistical fluff.
i think they love to let in skilled people. i hear you’ve got to prove that you’re a net plus economically for them before you can immigrate there.
When I think of economic powerhouse, I always think of New Zealand.......
“[I]n general, the protective system of our day is conservative, while the free trade system is destructive. It breaks up old nationalities and pushes the antagonism of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie to the extreme point. In a word, the free trade system hastens the social revolution. It is in this revolutionary sense alone, gentlemen, that I vote in favor of free trade.”They knew what they were aiming for, back then. And the politicians of today are also aiming for “the social revolution”.
— Karl Marx, 01/09/1848
Hey, I know, ask China, Japan, Germany etc. how their protectionist policies hurt them.
ok, I found out why we heard from New Zealand out of the blue. Zero’s there, collecting $300K in between meddling:
Another chuck n Nancy deal without budget for the wall... and the one before that.. all blessedvand signed from the very top on down. Funny how we keep funding lefties monthly and no wall.
Think about that. Every month we have a chance to stand up and fight, but no.
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