Trade policy ‘may damage N.Z.’

Press, 16 September 1987, Page 11

Trade policy ‘may damage N.Z.’

PA Wellington The increasingly protectionist nature of United

States trade policies could damage New Zealand exsaid the Minister of Overseas Trade and Marketing, Mr Moore. Mr Moore said he fully supported the Australian Prime Minister, Mr Hawke, who warned the United States that its unfair trade policies were straining relations between the two countries. “It is pretty critical for them as it is for us,” Mr Moore said. The Australians had

been “hammered” by the United States on wheat and sugar.

“We have been excluded from that for the simple reason that we don’t make wheat and sugar.” New Zealand products had not yet been a threat to the local users in the United States. But protectionist clauses being pursued by some American politicians, especially those involving the import of sheep meat could prove damaging if introduced, Mr Moore said.

New Zealand’s annual $l4 million sheep meat trade hardly represented a threat to the world’s most powerful agricultural nation. Mr Hawke hinted that the United States protectionist measures could affect the future of bilateral defence links.

Asked on television about the defence alliance, Mr Hawke said if the Americans thought the relationship would be unaffected by unfair trade , policies they would have to “think again.”