by frog
It seems kind of strange that people in London are going to such lengths to highlight the moral issue of taking a torch to China where people will be running around in circles, jumping up and down, or throwing pointy sticks. Meanwhile, here in New Zealand our government doesn’t see any moral quandary in choosing give China preferential rights to do billions of dollars of trade with us. Juxtaposition? It’s not like China is the only country left yet to do a preferential trade deal with. I would have thought a few other countries might have been further up the queue than China?
Published in Economy, Work, & Welfare | Society & Culture by frog on Mon, April 7th, 2008
Tags: China, London, Olympics, protest, trade, trade agreement
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
Interesting comment in the Sunday Star Times yesterday:
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There’s been a lot of hogwash from free-traders trying to claim that Chinese tariffs on NZ goods cost NZ exporters money, while simultaneously claiming that NZ’s tariffs on Chinese goods cost New Zealand consumers money. You can’t have it both ways.
Actually the 10-17% tariff on Chinese whitewear, clothing, textiles and footwear is pretty similar to the 10-20% tariff the Chinese put on NZ’s dairy and meat products, so this line about “Chinese products get in free anyway” doesn’t really hold up. China puts 30% on some manufactured goods, but it seems unlikely we will be selling much manufactured goods to China in the forseeable future anyway. Our current exports are mostly the usual stone-age stuff – wood, meat, hides and skins, plus dairy.
The politician’s line that NZ will sell high-tech products, such as software, in exchange for cheap merchandise sounds like wishful thinking more than anything. Given NZ’s legendary monolingualism it’s hard to see why we have an advantage over Chinese companies in software production and the like.
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Sam, Chinese tariffs on NZ goods cost the NZ exporter because the exporter’s goods are less able to compete on price with the Chinese products. This forces the Chinese consumer to spend more of their money on less efficiently produced goods from China or NZ.
Simultaneously, NZ tariffs on Chinese goods cost us money because we are forced to pay more money for either the Chinese goods or the less competitive NZ goods. It very much DOES work both ways. On the issue of price, who wins? No one!
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China is the really important one, actually. In a few decade’s time having good trade relations with China might be really important.
As StephenR rightly points out, it’s misleading to argue that tariffs paid by Chinese consumers don’t effect our exporters- losing the tariffs means lowering the price for consumers. That means the products are likely to sell faster, making our exporters more profit without requiring them to cut costs or take a hit to their margin. The government only loses in any sense if it needs the cash from tariffs in the short-term, which China doesn’t, as it is lending large amounts of money overseas, so the long-term gains from increased circulation of money will build their economy faster.
Effectively everyone wins, so long as the important labour standards and so on are actually enforced.
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“It very much DOES work both ways. ”
Yeah fair enough – I meant that you can’t argue it both ways, as I’ve seen free-traders doing – talking as if all the costs of both NZ and Chinese tariffs are borne by NZers, either business or consumers.
As to who wins – that’s a bit more complicated. If you take off tariffs the government loses income, which they will be inclined to make up in other ways (I haven’t noticed the Chinese or NZ governments electeing to shrink), you can’t act as if the money from tariffs just vanishes.
Secondly, simple price doesn’t matter to consumers much, prices relative to income is what matters and if you put the workers from ‘less efficient’ NZ companies out of their jobs, the average NZ income will at least temporarily fall. And if they get new jobs at lower wages because NZ companies are having to compete with Chinese companies cost, the fall will be permanent.
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Fair enough Sam, it’s just easy to interpret what you said in a different way…
As for tariffs, I’m not sure people would really give a damn if the government was losing money at the expense of the PEOPLE effectively having more money to spend. Maybe tariffs are directed into some sort of incredibly important fund, but maybe they aren’t – who knows.
Is this second point what more or less happened after the 80s reforms? I think I saw an example somewhere about wine – before we made crap because it was a protected industry, but now we make much better high quality, higher price wine because of the exposure to the global economy. This is just generalising, but perhaps the ‘less efficient’ NZ business will have an incentive to make better stuff, which is why I doubt the fall would be permanent…
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“I’m not sure people would really give a damn if the government was losing money at the expense of the PEOPLE effectively having more money to spend. ”
No I wouldn’t either, but I don’t think the government is going to choose to have less money – it will just get it in different ways.
How was wine protected? I can remember fairly cheap imported wine back in the 80s (alcohol has generally got cheaper, but I thought this was due to falling taxes on both local and imported stuff, rather than tariffs).
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Well it depends if the government decides that it really NEEDS the money. Cynics would have an opinion there, of course.
You are right to question me on wine – I read it in a recent newspaper article, possibly. But I believe my *general* point on that still stands.
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More on-topic, i’m not sure hassling the athletes carrying the torch was a good way to attract sympathy for this particular cause. Something more passive like disrupting it through a sit in or large demonstrations during the photo-op moments maybe?
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Yes, the unseemly haste to jump into bed with China suggests that our politicians feel a little desperate for some reason.
Probably they (wrongly) feel there is greater benefit for NZ than for China.
Methinks they are making the same mistake they made over Kyoto. The best of intentions, but insufficient analysis.
Personally I feel that local employers will prefer to employ ‘temporary’ Chinese workers that are here in greater numbers as a result of the FTA, rather than higher paid local workers.
That is the thin end of the wedge, and is the real reason why this FTA will cost us dearly in the end.
I would rather see us develop and train local workers than import desperate workers from China.
We already have too many local ‘castoffs’ losing any hope of being employed at a reasonable living wage. No point making it worse.
I am sure New Zealanders would also protest against the shallow cosmetic glory of the Olympic torch if they only understood what it really represents.
It always surprises me that NZers showed so much fire against the South African regime in 1981, yet seem to lack much insight into problems closer to home.
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No doubt we will see the details tomorrow greengeek, but the word from Goff was that the 1600 workers a year from China will be skilled, as in the type of workers that NZ is VERY short of. Local workers are being trained and developed (aren’t they?) but there just aren’t enough, though your point about ‘castoffs’ is a good one, although they are unlikely to be transformed into engineers and radiologists any time soon…
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True… but I feel that one of the reasons our engineers and radiologists are leaving NZ is that too many of our people end up as unemployed castoffs drawing the DPB, unemployment benefit or sickness benefit, and therefore becoming a drain on the remainder who study and work.
If we could redress some of that balance fewer skilled people would seek to emigrate.
I just wish we could find a way to develop our own people in preference to giving up hope on them, and letting them rot on the public purse.
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Those on the DPB are usually divorced women who are only on this support a few years. The numbers unemployed are under 4% and expected to remain low. The economic reason for people leaving is the global skilled worker shortage. Australia is also losing skilled workers and replacing them with ones from here (the Oz workers are not leaving because of those on the DPB and unemployment there – Canada and the UK have worse problems in this area than either of us). Where there is a shortage, workers follow the trail of the higher pay offer. This is why more people are leaving now, even though the numbers on the DPB and the UB are falling.
The number of “Chinese” workers here at any one time would be no higher than 1800. If some of them want to migrate here (after acquiring English skills etc) they have to leave and apply to do so – and if successful would only join the numbers migrating because we need skilled worker migrants.
Continuing economic growth and the local supply of services is dependent on skilled immigrant workers.
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Oh and the reduced price of imported goods resulting from freer trade compensates us for the inflationary impact of things like rising minimum wages. Allowing us to improve the low income workers wages and living standards without any “overall” cost to the rest of society because of the gains from free trade.
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“The number of “Chinese? workers here at any one time would be no higher than 1800. ”
As I understand the agreement, there’s 800 Chinese workers allowed in in specified trades (defined in annex 11), 1000 in skilled trades (defined in a side letter), 1000 in a working holiday scheme (set out in another side letter) and an unspecified number of “executives”, “managers”, “specialists” and “installers/servicers” defined in annex 10). Is this correct – I find the text devillishly confusing?
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Firstly, 4% still represents a finite number of real people, and we should aim get that figure down to 0%, not increase it. Don’t forget of course that huge efforts have been made to transfer many people off the UB and onto other benefits. Where would you put someone who tries to commit suicide as a result of redundancy? On a UB? No, those people (and believe it or not there are many in that category) are not reflected in the UB figures, they either show in sickness/invalids benefits figures, or walk the streets unemployed and unhoused, or else join the black/casual labour market which has bloomed over the last 5 years, and don’t reflect in the figures because they don’t pay tax, and don’t enjoy the normally accepted life infrastructure that has been the norm in NZ for the last 50 years (It is changing now of course, and will get much worse)
Secondly, that UB percentage will grow significantly from now on, due in part to this FTA.
Every NZ citizen is worth more than any non-NZ citizen. At least, that SHOULD be the aim of every government policy. Unfortunately our politicians boost their own self esteem by giving away the things that rightfully should belong to the rest of us.
They have ceased to understand that they should be acting in our service, rather than overseeing us as if we are some sort of material possession.
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Like the first part of your post, greengeek.
But I think the second part gives legroom for xenophobes, and implicitly advocates a discriminatory regime re people who are NZ residents, but not citizens. I can’t accept that “Every NZ citizen is worth more than any non-NZ citizen” – accident of birth should not be the basis for policy imo. Everyone who has a right to live in New Zealand should be treated equally under the law.
If this approach is enshrined in law, the law then reinforces derogatory stereotypes of immigrants. People entitled to live in New Zealand should be acknowledged as residents, rather risk them being stereotyped and alienated as gooks, chinamen, poms, dagos, slopeheads, coconuts etc.
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I don’t believe it – I used several of the most offensive and derogatory ethnic descriptive terms (although not the n-word, which is worst of the lot) in above post, and it wasn’t picked up by spam filter.
But I say a certain 4 letter word starting with “s” and it always gets caught. Can’t work out what the priorities of the filter are – seems bizarre to me that “slopeheads” is acceptablelanguage here but “s**t” is not.
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Sam Buchanan
I think it’s 1800 + the 1000 here as tourists “able” to do work while here (in jobs like the seasonal picking of fruit). It would be too hard to include the 1000 in the worker total, if they were just tourists most of the time.
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greengeek
IMO the free trade agreement will help grow the economy, so it will add jobs.
I don’t see the addition of extra fruit pickers for those who need the workers in the regions (are you aware there are only 40 on the UB in Marlborough throughout the year) as causing any problem. And as for an extra 1800 skilled or Chinese specialist workers they will help grow the economy in a total of about
Yes the numbers on the UB are no longer an issue (except for the pockets of young people – something the new education or work training focus may address) and it is now the issue of SB and IB (the DPB mostly includes people in transition in their lives and after retraining or child care arrangements they return to work). I see the issue as increasing (after tax by reducing tax to zero on the first $6000-10,000) the benefits to improve the social circumstance of those left in poverty. It’s about improving peoples nutrition and housing, their sense of well-being so they can improve their health and take up the rising minumum wage opportunities.
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There is a total number number of skilled migrants of about 80,000.
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“I think it’s 1800 + the 1000 here as tourists “able? to do work while here ”
So were does the group (executives, service providers etc.) defined in annex 10 fit in?
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The media have reported it as being in 3 categories
800 in various Chinese specialty fields – each with their own quota – such as chefs or translators
1000 as skilled workers where we have skilled worker shortages.
The above two groups for up to 3 years.
1000 who can work while here as tourists – for a few months etc.
And yeah I am not sure either where the otherwise mentioned group category of workers you mention fits in. I suggest you write to the Minister.
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These “labour” figures are interesting. Regarding the 800 in “Chinese speciality fields”, as a Chinese speaking NZer who will be directly in competition with these additional workers, I find it rather dismaying. There were already provisions for “chinese speciality” workers to obtain working visas, and there is already a large Chinese population in NZ many of whom are quite capable of filling many of these positions.
As for Chinese speaking tour guides, again, I wouldn’t mind doing that work at all, except I have been in NZ long enough to know the pay and conditions are extremely poor, with unstable and seasonal work only.
A constant influx of new workers from China only allows their employers to keep the wages and conditions poor, because lets face it, I don’t see the number of Chinese who want jobs falling anytime soon.
(BTW, how many of you when visit another country would expect (or prefer) your tour guide to be another NZer?).
The specialists/managers category, same argument again, it has always been possible to get a visa under this category, but despite the fact NZ supposedly has a shortage of accountants, many Chinese graduates of NZ universities have a very hard time finding work here, I fail to see how bringing in accountants directly from China would assist this situation.
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Jingyang, your post is very valuable because it gives a real-life example of the effects of this FTA, rather than the theoretical comments from those who think FTA-based growth will always be good.
Toad…I think Jingyang is correct in implying that the numbers of prospective immigrants from China is endless; which I think should be good reason for valuing existing NZ residents as more important than newcomers.
It is not that we want to be xenophobic, it is simply that we should adequately protect, educate and develop our existing citizens before we flood our communities and labour market with others who may cause unnecessarily painful competition.
If we apply your logic of treating everyone the same we would open the floodgates and heve every citizen of the world coming here. Would you consider that sort of growth/equality to be beneficial??
Controlled immigration seemed to be going along very nicely as it was, without using the FTA to blow a hole through the normal immigration process.
SPC…I see no reason why the fruit picking issues could not be solved by using UB labour. All it would require is a method of transporting and housing that labour to where it was needed. The exact same problem will still be the case if migrant labour is used; in fact surely the influx of migrant labour to fruit picking areas will mean that they go on the UB after the fruit is picked, or else be transported and housed elsewhere anyway??
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