Sweeping U.S. trade reform to benefit New Zealand

Press, 25 August 1988, Page 2

Sweeping U.S. trade reform to benefit New Zealand

PA Wellington New Zealand stood to gain from the sweeping reform of United States trade policy signed yesterday by President Reagan, said the Minister of Overseas Trade and Marketing, Mr Moore, yesterday. The 1000-page omnibus Trade Bill is a significant piece of legislation that has taken more than two years of work to bring together.

New Zealand and other proponents of open trade succeeded in having proposed quotas for lamb and casein and stringent labelling requirements on meat products deleted from the bill, Mr Moore said. The bill would toughen up the United States trading rules and provide for stronger action to be taken against what the United States considers, unfair trading practices. “Provisions of this type must raise the possibility that New Zealand might in future suffer some disadvantage because of United States actions aimed against other larger trading powers,” Mr. Moore said. “However, this has not happened in the past and we shall make every effort to ensure that it does not happen in the future.”

The new law had a number of positive features.

It gave the Amerian President “fast-track” negotiation authority for the Uruguay G.A.T.T. round, and provided for the implementation of a harmonised tariff system which would bring the United States into line with other trading nations.

Provision for the suspension of tariffs on some wool items should help

New Zealand wool exporters.

The new law gave the United States Department of Agriculture 180 days to complete a study of the effect of lamb imports on domestic production. . A dairy export subsidy scheme run by the United States Government was enhanced by the endorsement of generic certificates, which brought more flexibility • into the exporter subsidy system.

Mr Moore said this measure was not expected to disadvantage New Zealand in the foreseeable future because stocks of United States Govern-ment-owned dairy products held in the United States were very low. The Trade Bill had a number of other provisions affecting agriculture. It extended to 1990 the export enhancement programme and raised its spending ceiling from SUSISOO million to SUS2SOO million. This programme gave surplus agricultural commodities to exporters and was designed to enable them to compete against subsidised products, especially those from the European Community.

It also established a “triggered ; marketing loan” programme for certain commodities. The failure of G.A.T.T. agricultural trade negotiations to make significant progress by January 1, 1990, on eliminating agricultural subsidies would trigger marketing loans for 1990 crops of wheat, feed grains and soybeans, unless Mr Reagan certified that such a programme would harm further negotiations, Mr Moore said.