On Sun, 16 Nov 2003 19:00:47 GMT, "Ed Huntress"
wrote:

"Malcolm Moore" wrote in message
.. .

snip

The irony here is that, not long ago, you had exceptionally high tariffs.
Your entire economic policy reversed itself over the course of a decade. Now
you're true believers -- barrier-free-trade converts -- who happen to be
left with some very high, targeted tariffs in textiles and a few other
barriers, and you're objecting to a lower targeted one in the US on lamb --
which no longer exists, by the way. Is the pot calling the kettle black?

Is 40% regarded as high? That's what the US placed on lamb outside the
quota. Now quotas are an interesting concept!!
I had already stated the lamb tariff's had been removed.

snip

We can afford to import more from you but there are other countries
also vying for our business, and if you aren't marketing to us or if
your products are too expensive or if they are badly designed then
we'll buy from someone else. Simple as that.

Simple as that? Well, look at the numbers. The US is already the
second-largest supplier of your imports, after Australia. Your imports from
the US are running 25% higher than those from Japan, 212% higher than those
from the UK, and 494% higher than those from Germany (all 2002 figures). It
looks like your market is pretty well saturated with US goods, in terms of
the percentage of it that our goods represent, and your current levels of
spending on imports. If we're too expensive or too badly designed, you must
be a bunch of patsies, buying all of our overpriced junk. g

We'll buy what it suits us to buy. I get the impression that you think
we are dependent on imports from the US? The value of the USD relative
to our dollar at present makes your products reasonably cheap. Today
the rate is 63c to the dollar, the 2001/2002 average was 44c. The
value relative to Sterling and the Euro has been much more steady.

In other words, it isn't "as simple as that." In fact, the round-robin of
trade you describe is perfectly reasonable, and that's the way it usually
goes, within limits. We're now at or beyond the limits, however, with a $460
billion trade deficit in goods ($418 billion in combined goods and
services).

Indignant demands that we accept even more imports are going to meet with
even more indignant demands that you balance up your accounts before we'll
do so. Otherwise, US politics are going to lead to a closing of some import
doors, and the WTO can go **** up a rope before we'll keep gutting our
manufacturing.

After all the OT threads in this ng over the last few years I am not
surprised by that attitude!
Must we come searching for things to buy? Perhaps you could get out
selling.

snip

You may have missed the original conversation that Geoff resurrected in his
first comment in this thread. He said that he thought the idea of universal
offsets -- in other words, zero balances of trade -- was a good one, using
the opportunity to sarcastically remark that the US has one of the most
protective economies in the world.

Well I've looked for it but the only post from Geoff that google
records on the date you gave seems to be a short post on pop-up ads?

snip

Your suggestion above would involve a massive bureaucracy to monitor
trade flows in and out, and issue licenses. We don't have that level
of regulation.

It's basically a concept to stimulate thought, not a specific plan. As for
"regulation," you most certainly *do* have it, unless you're letting
products flow on and off your shores with no accounting for them. But it
would be clumsy to implement, even if the data and the tracking of trade
shipments by virtually every trading country in the world are minutely
detailed -- except for drugs and guns.

Regulation implies a central system to give approvals to what can be
traded, and from where. Apart from the obvious illegal items and
sanitary measures I can't think of any, unlike in the past, as Geoff
mentioned.

snip

The most interesting thing to me in this discussion is the insular,
parochial view you (and perhaps the other New Zealanders) have of what's
really going on in world trade. Geoff, the US is the world's largest
exporter of goods, and the world's largest exporter of services. We "get
out
and sell stuff" quite a lot; a lot more than any other country.

You are the world's largest exporter in dollar terms but that is
meaningless.

Oh, jeez. So, what would be "meaningful"? I think your wiggling around the
obvious is a little...er...obvious. g

You have a large population, large landmass and lots of
natural resources. Of course you export lots.

Thank you! A little recognition of reality here is a big help...

What is more meaningful
is the value of goods and services as a percentage of GDP. The WTO
gives NZ exports as 32% of GDP in 1992 and US as 23.6% in 1996. If you
can find more recent figures I'd be interested to see them but I don't
think you can accuse us of not knowing about world trade.

What is this, Fun With Statistics Day? Your figure for NZ is roughly
accurate (it's 36% now) but you must have copied the figure for the US
wrong. It's around 10%, and has been in that range for a while. The 23%
figure is about right for total trade, imports and exports combined.

Yes, my mistake, Apologies. But the real figures makes my point even
more clearly.

Let's see, NZ has US$27.5 billion in exports (goods and services), and the
US has US$974 billion in exports, and, somehow, that translates to more
knowledge of trade in New Zealand? What do you do, distribute knowledge
based on per-capita export amounts, a proportionate amount to each brain? Do
you pass any on to the sheep? g

With the exception of the sheep, yes. What you are talking about here
are attitudes (parochial, insular). I'd hazard a guess that a higher
proportion of our population is involved in international trade and
that their resultant attitudes influence the rest of the population to
a greater extent than in the US, where the proportion of people with
direct experience is less, even though their numerical number may be
greater than here.

snip

As far as parochialism goes, check out the percentage of US citizens
who have never left your boundaries as compared to other countries. I
recall seeing the figure for your national politicians as being only
about 40%, I'd be very surprised if ours was less than 100%. I think
you can expect the general population to be proportionately less than
that in both countries.

I posed that as a question, and I referenced it to things that Geoff was
saying (sorry again, Geoff). I don't know how much Geoff or other New
Zealanders know about trade, but there are some very narrow focuses there,
at least. ....

From where you sit they may appear narrow but then you've just
admitted you don't now much about how we view trade. From where we sit
the US focus sometimes seems narrow, "if our producers are hurting
then we'll make things difficult." rather than "hey, we could do
things better".

.......Do your fellow New Zealanders complain as Geoff does about
American "protectionism"? Do they know how our average tariffs compare with
those of some of your other trading partners, for example? Your doing around
$20 billion in product exports, 62% of which is ag exports, most of that
being meat, doesn't encourage one to think so.

Sorry I don't understand what you're saying here. The fact that 62% is
primary produce means we don't know what other countries are applying
in tariff's?

Well don't complain that we don't buy enough of your products. We have
the whole world to choose from.

I'm not complaining about what you buy. I'm complaining about people
bitching because we don't buy more of *your* products, when we already buy
more than you buy from us. If you were running a deficit and you bitched,
that's human nature. If you're running a surplus and you bitch it isn't
bigger, then what the hell is going on here?

Because I don't think the bitch was that the trade is not bigger, it
was that you have at times applied tariff's to stop it growing, when
any growth is ultimately as a result of what your consumers seem to
desire.

To quote your
ambassador from the latest WTO meetings, this year, "New Zealand was the
only developed country to have had a comprehensive system of import
licensing, to keep out competitive imports, until it was finally abolished
in the late 1980s...Tariffs had also been reduced, from an average rate of
around 30% in the late 1980s to 4.1%." You made a lot of progress in short
period of time, but you were coming out of a very deep hole to begin with.
Just look at your exchange-rate currency valuation over that time, and your
GDP growth. They tell the story.

And the effect of quotas is?

The obvious difference between NZ and the US is that we have not had
any tariff's considered by and judged illegal by the WTO. The only
tariff I can recall being imposed recently was against Korean
whiteware manufacturers who were clearly dumping product here.

Of course not. When your entire population is less than that of Brooklyn and
Queens, and when you already produce excess dairy products, eggs, and some
other protected products for export, who is going to bother?

The same reasoning could apply to your use of tariff's, but you did.

Mostly they wag their fingers at you. At the last WTO meeting, more than
half the countries crabbed about your "sanitary" restrictions on cheese,
milk products, and eggs. You have roughly zero imports of those items;
you've erected a brick wall based on a non-tariff barrier. But it isn't
worth enough money to anyone to launch a case with the WTO.

And does the US accept product from countries with agricultural
diseases and pests that would harm your producers if they got
established?. One of our comparative advantages is that we don't have
many of the diseases and pests that reduce production in other
countries. Asking us to risk that status is like expecting you to
reduce your standard of living to match your trading partners. We have
tried to accomodate overseas suppliers, check out the problems with
Californian grapes. They were exempted fumigation because they assured
they could supply clean product. After spiders were repeatedly found
when unpacking in supermarkets, even after renewed assurances they
would do better, the inevitable happened.

And you have industries that you protect, including footwear and apparel,
with tariffs running around 15% and, in one case of women's clothing, 30%.
Are they justified? Only if you're protecting industries, and the WTO is
letting you get away with it, largely because you've reduced other tariffs
so much -- from a very high starting point.

And because there is a continuing process to eliminate them.

(Why, BTW, do you keep initiating dumping claims and then dropping them
before they come to a hearing? The WTO really let you have it over that at
the last meeting. g)

Look at your tariff schedule on textiles. You still have some remnants of
highly protective tariffs, but note that your drop from 30% average tariffs
occurred all in one decade. Suddenly you got economic religion. And like
sudden converts of all kinds, now you're becoming a bit sanctimonious. g

Nah. The big boys in the gang put us up to it and now they're nowhere
to be seen.

Hmm. That's twice. Why don't you tell us why you buy so damned many of them,
if they're so "uncompetitive," relative to what you buy from Japan or
Germany?

Because at the moment it is cheaper to buy from the US than Germany
because your dollar has "fallen", or the rest of the world's
currencies have risen (ours included). That's how come the US
equipment that was in my workshop last week came to be there.

Apparently your anecdotal example proves that the WTO world trade data is
all wrong. g

No, but it may explain why you are rightly concerned by the US
performance.

I have no concern about US performance, Malcolm. As the World Bank will tell
you, we have the highest productivity in the world, the highest level of
exports in the world, and one of the highest personal incomes in the world.
Which performance indicator are you thinking about? Our agricultural
exports?

There seem to be quite a few in rcm that have concerns. I did get the
distinct impression that you were concerned about a deficit.

As I said, people in a small country so dependent on exports are likely to
have a parochial view of world economics.
The fact is, exports are only a
small part of our economy, partly because we already have the largest single
share, and partly because commerce within our own borders is so active and
so lucrative that the higher costs of doing business overseas don't make
sense for many of our industries. And in those areas in which per-capita
incomes go directly to the bottom line of manufacturing costs, and where
technology is a commodity that anyone country buy (much of metalworking, for
example), the result of chasing the manufacturing costs of low-wage
countries is a race to the bottom. No thanks.

In which case you should have no concerns whether people buy your
exports or not, it seems to be of trifling concern to you??

snip

I'm all for offsets, Malcolm. So when is NZ going to start investing more in
the US?

Well, we tried as a constructive way of avoiding lamb tariff's but
your farmers weren't interested!! Remember.

Oh, BTW, I looked up the lamb situation out of curiosity. Yesterday marked
the second anniversary of the day on which the US dropped its lamb
tariff-rate quota on NZ and Australian lamb. What the hell is it that Geoff
is complaining about?

As above, I did note the tariff's had ended.

sigh You have a very narrow view of "performance." Trade isn't an end in
itself. The purpose of trade is to raise one's standard of living. Our
incomes average well over US$30,000. How about yours? They're about half of
that. From what basis are you giving this advice, in other words? Do you
think the US should behave like an island country with a population of less
than 4 million? Or do you think that perhaps another standard of
"performance" applies? Hmm?

Chuckle, the big daddy argument!

snip

You neglect to mention that Aus. and NZ flooded the US market with lamb in
the '90s, more than doubling their exports in less than five years. That's
what they call an import "surge." Most countries protect against surges with
quotas and tariffs. The US has a trade act that provides for it (Sec. 201,
it's called), which was invoked in the case of the lamb surge. The WTO has a
very weak set of rules for protecting against surges. That's one reason I
think the WTO is living on borrowed time.

It well may be on borrowed time. Maybe the rules are intentionally
weak because measures such as Sec. 201 are seen as counter productive.

snip

regards
Malcolm.

--
Remove sharp objects to get a valid e-mail address