New Zealand-US free trade pact hinges on ’inclusion of agriculture’: Prime Minister
RTT News | 22 March 2010
New Zealand-US Free Trade Pact Hinges On ’Inclusion Of Agriculture’: Prime Minister
(RTTNews) — The Free Trade Agreement between New Zealand and the U.S., over which negotiations began last week, will be signed only if it includes agriculture, Prime Minister John Key said on Monday.
Briefing reporters at a weekly news conference in the capital Wellington, he said the Free Trade Agreement could not go ahead if the powerful U.S. dairy lobby succeeded in excluding agriculture from the terms of the agreement.
"We want a high-quality agreement. So coming away with an agreement that for instance carved out agriculture is unacceptable to New Zealand," Key said.
He was apparently referring to a letter sent to U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk by a group of U.S. lawmakers which accused New Zealand’s dairy industry of "anti-competitive practices" and therefore demanded its exclusion from the talks.
It claimed that the market share commanded by New Zealand farmers-owned Fonterra Co-operative Group Ltd, the world’s largest exporter of dairy products, would undermine the interests of the U.S. dairy sector.
Key said although Fonterra dominated New Zealand’s domestic market, it produced only two per cent of the world’s total milk output and competed fairly on the global market.
He pointed out that New Zealand did not offer subsidies for the dairy sector or its exports as opposed to U.S.
Key added that the letter from the U.S. lawmakers was typical of the "most extreme or hardest position" stand adopted at the beginning and it was in everybody’s interest to liberalise trade.
Talks on the Free Trade Agreement which began last week in Melbourne were part of the efforts to expand New Zealand’s existing trade agreement with Singapore, Chile and Brunei to include the U.S., Australia, Vietnam and Peru.
by RTT Staff Writer
