Posts by Rob Salmond
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Polity: Why did the TPP fail?, in reply to Rob Stowell,
Knowing this lot, we will pass it all anyway, just to be ahead of the game – so later on we have nothing left to bargain with
Yep, NZ did a very good line in "pre-emptive, unilateral trade liberalisation" in the 1980s and 1990s, cheered on by MFAT. They were later shocked - shocked! - when they found out other countries didn't follow suit.
Head-desk.
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Polity: Why did the TPP fail?, in reply to Bart Janssen,
@Bart: I don;t think I ever tried to pass these off precise, empirical data, and you'll find the words "guess" and so on sprinkled through the post. The point here is to illustrate the structure of the bargaining problem using the chart. It's pretty common among social scientists, and I think can help provide insight about what's going on.
But, hey, I get that my cup of tea isn't always everybody else's cup of tea.
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Polity: Why did the TPP fail?, in reply to Fen Tex,
@Fen Tex:I'm sorry if I wasn't clear. The idea I'm advancing is NOT: "it couldn’t satisfy anyone so might be vetoed by anyone." In fact, this theory suggests there really WAS room for every veto player to be made overall better off, but only if the trade negotiators themselves were willing to swallow some pride and make do with a smaller deal.
Also, I don't agree when you say: "the merits and problems with the TPP have sweet f’all to do with it’s failure." Had the TPP looked different, and given the US more of what it wanted, I'm convinced it wouldn't have become a political football in the Presidential race. Trump / Clinton would have found something else to kick around instead.
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Polity: Why did the TPP fail?, in reply to Tom Semmens,
@Tom: I don't really agree, because I think the TPP had less to do with "free trade" than many people claimed..
I'm persuaded by people like Larry Summer and Paul Krugman that the TPP isn;t really a classic "free trade" deal at all. It main impetus was about erecting IP-investment based barriers to trade and governmental action, rather than the classic free trade mission of reducing tariff and similar barriers. (Yes, it reduced tariffs as well, but the more fundamental changes were elsewhere.)
It's nicely discussed in a New Yorker article here:
http://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/r-i-p-free-trade-treaties
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Polity: Why did the TPP fail?, in reply to David Hood,
@David: Yep, the placements aren't precise. That's common in this kind of structural modelling. As I mention in-text, the exact placement matters less than the broad pattern - a diverse range of national-level viewpoints, each backed with a veto threat, over what shape TPP should take.
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Polity: Four cents on Brexit, Fonterra,…, in reply to Matthew Hooton,
Don’t know who your very smart trade professional was, but intuitively it doesn’t seem right. Charles Finny has a very different view:
Not sure I 100% agree with your police work there, Lou. From Finny's post:
And what about the quota arrangements applying to New Zealand in sensitive areas of agriculture? Do these get allocated between the EU and UK? Or because they were negotiated to compensate NZ for UK entry into the EEC do they get allocated fully to the UK? - Again there is uncertainty over this and how and when negotiations are held.
Which is exactly my point.
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Polity: Four cents on Brexit, Fonterra,…, in reply to Corin H,
Under WTO rules, the renegotiation process is meant to ensure that any changes are "not less favourable to trade ... prior to such negotiations". If not, compensation is required.
Interesting point, and thanks for posting it.
I expect, though, that phrases like "not less favourable to trade" are open to all manner of legal manoeuvring. For example, does "not less favourable to trade" mean for every single tariff line between every single bilateral pair of nations, or for overall trade between every bilateral pair, or for overall trade going into / out of the country making changes, or as a vibe? Methinks it would be pretty expensive for NZ MFAT to find out. I'm sure I'm missing other interpretations, and existing precedents may be less than helpful here because of the very unusual negotiation UK / EU will be involved in.
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Polity: Custard, in reply to izogi,
If the point is meant to be that a Labour-led alternative would be better, then I wish there were more in here about what Labour would be doing, why Labour’s people are superior, would make highly competent and better Ministers who are less prone to screwing up, and how it’d overall be better.
Otherwise it’s just asking people to vote for the least worst instead of the best.
(Also replying to folk why supported izogi's comment above, including Aflie, Joe Wylie, Marc C, and others...)
I agree that there's a two-fold challenge for parties of the left - to show their promise as well as the incumbent's shortcomings - and they need to meet both challenges to win the right to govern. Commenters are entirely right about that.
The only thing I'd say is that not every blog post is about every aspect of politics. Writing an article solely on housing, for example, doesn't imply Labour no longer cares about health. Sometimes just one aspect is worth writing 800 words about - as I did here, after the especially bad few weeks the government has had.
Put another way, a *blog post* that concentrates solely on National's shortcomings does not mean the left's *electoral strategy* is to concentrate solely on shortcomings. There are many other blog posts and other media that do different things to this post. Indeed, in many other forums Labour and the Greens are already rolling out their positive vision for New Zealand, promoting alternative policies on housing, jobs, kids, and so on. It's the combination of all of those posts that make up the strategy, not this post alone.
That's the vision we feel New Zealanders will warm to come election day, and that people will go the booth next year voting for a great progressive vision as well as to get rid of the current crowd.
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@Nicholas: I'm going on the PISA rankings on education - NZ kids are doing substantially worse now that in 2006 or 2007 when PISA did it's previous round of testing. And I agree outcomes are the most important health metrics, but I feel pretty comfortable saying health investment levels and health outcomes are linked.