Search

Since its last TPR, New Zealand has engaged actively in trade and environment negotiations at the WTO. New Zealand has and will continue to support ambitious outcomes in these negotiations. In particular, ambitious outcomes on fisheries subsidies and on the elimination of tariffs on a broad range of environmental goods have the potential to deliver concrete economic, environmental and developmental benefits. (...)

New Zealand is also a party to the Information Technology Agreement expansion negotiations and the Environmental Goods Agreement negotiations. While these processes take place among a subset of WTO Members outside of the core WTO negotiating framework, they will all contribute to the strengthening of the rules-based multilateral trading system.

(...) Beyond the WTO context, New Zealand is also a strong proponent of fossil fuel subsidies reform and the 2012 Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum (APEC) commitment to reduce tariffs on a list of 54 environmental goods to 5% or less by the end of 2015. New Zealand is currently leading the Friends of the Chair on Environmental Goods and Services to implement this APEC commitment.

At the end of 2012, APEC economies agreed to reduce tariffs on a list of 54 environmental goods to 5% or less by the end of 2015. The initiative built on a decade of work to open the sector within APEC and the World Trade Organization. New Zealand has fully implemented the outcome.

New Zealand actively supports trade and agriculture-related work in the OECD, including through its participation in the Trade Committee, the Working Party of the Trade Committee and the Joint Working Party on Trade and Environment. (...)

Policy measures are aimed at lifting trend growth in a sustainable and balanced manner. A key element of this is helping the economy to absorb the impact of earthquake reconstruction (estimated to be around 15% of GDP over a decade) in the least distorting way possible.

New Zealand aims both internationally and domestically to develop sound and sustainable policies for trade, the environment, and labour, and to ensure that such policies are mutually supportive and serve the overarching objective of sustainable development.

New Zealand thus seeks FTAs which are WTO-compatible, comprehensive in scope and which improve the conditions for the growth of New Zealand's economic relationships, including through trade in goods, services, and investment, as well as to secure trade facilitating commitments from our trading partners on a range of related issues such as rules of origin, customs cooperation, sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) and technical barriers to trade (TBT) issues, together with appropriate commitments on intellectual property, competition policy, labour and environment. (...)

New Zealand has taken a proactive approach towards achieving these aims in its bilateral, regional and plurilateral trade agreements. Trade and labour and trade and environment outcomes have been included in all the Regional Trade Agreements (RTAs) New Zealand has concluded during the period under review. The New Zealand-Hong Kong China Environment Cooperation Agreement, the Memorandum of Understanding on Labour Cooperation between New Zealand and Hong Kong, China, the Memorandum of Understanding between the Government of the Republic of Indonesia and the Government of New Zealand on Environmental Cooperation, Memorandum of Understanding between the Government of New Zealand and the Government of the Republic of Indonesia on Labour Cooperation, the Agreement on Economic Cooperation between New Zealand and the Separate Customs Territory of Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu (ANZTEC) and the New Zealand-Korea Free Trade Agreement all include provisions which incorporate shared commitments, cooperation in areas of shared interests, and a consultative mechanism.

New Zealand's approach is to negotiate comprehensive agreements covering a range of trade-related issues, including: trade in goods (market access, rules of origin, customs procedures, trade remedies, sanitary and phytosanitary measures, technical barriers to trade); trade in services (market access, movement of natural persons); investment; intellectual property; government procurement; competition and consumer policy; trade and labour; and trade and environment.