The ideology of grovelling to Trump

Yesterday the Trump regime in America began a global trade war, imposing punitive tariffs in an effort to extort political and economic concessions from other countries and US companies and constituencies. Trump's tariffs will make kiwis nearly a billion dollars poorer every year, but Luxon has decided to do nothing in response.

Part of this is NeoLiberal ideology, which holds that tariffs are always bad and always make people worse off. In the case of Aotearoa, this simply isn't true - modelling published by the University of Auckland's Niven Winchester shows that Aotearoa would be $400 a year per household better off (plus the non-monetary benefit of sticking it to America) by joining global retaliation than by grovelling to US bullying and doing nothing. And of course, there are other, non-tariff ways to retaliate: finally imposing revenue taxes on US dotcoms operating here; personal sanctions against members of the US regime and their oligarch supporters similar to those we impose on Russia; repealing US-imposed IP laws.

But there's another ideological basis for the government's refusal to respond, and that is that National, ACT, and NZ First are all conservative parties. And conservatives are ultimately about all traditional hierarchies: men over women, whites over non-whites, straights over queers, parents over children, rich over poor, the strong over the weak. But there's another traditional hierarchy they're also in favour of: big countries over small ones. The US (originally the UK) over us. Which is why they get involved in so many US wars, and why they're too chicken to stand up to Trump: because they see Aotearoa's natural role as one of subservience to a foreign overlord.

(There are ugly words used to describe political leaders who promote the interests of foreign powers over those of their own country, and they all seem completely applicable here.)

These are not kiwi values. And on foreign policy, they're also not aligned in any way with our interests as kiwis. Luxon's refusal to stand up for kiwis against the Trump regime is a real betrayal. And we should hold him accountable for it at the next election.

How to fight back against Trump's tariffs

In the US, the Trump regime is busy imposing tariffs on its neighbours and allies, then revoking them, then reimposing them, permanently poisoning relations with Canada and Mexico. Trump has also threatened to impose tariffs on agricultural goods, which will affect Aotearoa's exports. National's response? To grovel for an exemption, on the basis of our past good relations. As for how successful that will be, Australia has adopted a similar approach to Trump's threats to impose universal tariffs on imported aluminium and steel. And the Trump regime has told them to fuck off. Being a long-standing US ally counts for nothing. So if they're going to impose tariffs on Australia, they are absolutely going to impose them on Aotearoa.

So the question is what National is going to do about it. Beg some more? But Trump responds to weakness by doubling down on oppression. Canada and Ukraine show that the way to get policy change from the US regime is to stand up to them and force it. As for how we could do that, counter-tariffs would just disrupt supply chains and raise the cost of living here. As a small country without a lot of leverage, we need to be smart.

Fortunately, there are some smart ideas lying around. America's economic power is currently built on fascist oligarchic techbros, who are also directly backing Trump's regime. And tech (and SF) writer Cory Doctorow has suggested that countries target them directly, by repealing the US imposed IP laws which underpin their wealth and power and allow them to fuck over their customers:

Governments around the world signed up to protect giant American companies from small domestic competitors (from local app stores – for phones, games consoles, and IoT gadgets – to local printer cartridge remanufacturers) on the promise of tariff-free access to US markets. With Trump imposing tariffs will-ye or nill-ye on America's trading partners large and small, there is no reason to go on delivering rents to US Big Tech.

The first country or bloc (hi there, EU!) to do this will have a giant first-mover advantage, and could become a global export powerhouse, dominating the lucrative markets for tools that strike at the highest-margin lines of business of the most profitable companies in the history of the human race. Like Jeff Bezos told the publishers: "your margin is my opportunity"

[...]

It's time for a global race to the top – for countries to compete with one another to see who will capture US Big Tech's margins the fastest and most aggressively. Not only will this make things cheaper for everyone else in the world – it'll also make things cheaper for Americans, because once there is a global, profitable trade in software that jailbreaks your Big Tech devices and services, it will surely leak across the US border. Canada doesn't have to confine itself to selling reasonably priced pharmaceuticals to beleaguered Americans – it can also set up a brisk trade in the tools of technological self-determination and liberation from Big Tech bondage.

Doctorow was talking about Canada, but Aotearoa also has such laws. Section 226C of the Copyright Act criminalises circumventing "technological protection measures", or publishing information which shows people how to do it themselves. In other words, it makes jailbreaking your devices, or blocking techbro surveilance or advertising, or telling people how to do it, a crime. There's an exception to enable lawful use - which is why we all have region-free blueray players - but that doesn't cover protecting your privacy, or using your hardware in an unapproved way, or letting you fix your own stuff. Repealing those sections would let us do all those things, and create a new export industry for jailbreaking Big Tech.

Unfortunately, due to US influence, we have similar obligations in FTAs with other countries. So any tariff-response repeal would need to target the US directly. The best way of doing this would be a simple amendment to the Copyright Act, inserting a section saying that sections 226 to 226E do not apply to technological protection measures applied by US-controlled companies. The definition of "US controlled" would need to cover the various money laundering schemes used by the tech monopolies to dodge taxes, but I think its within the wit of our drafters to do so. And that should give us open season on US techbro bullshit, while complying with our obligations to everyone else.

The question is whether the government will have the courage to do this, or whether they will accept bullying by America and let Trump's techbros continue to pillage us and invade our privacy.

Climate Change: Fossil fuels versus free trade

One of the arguments against National's gas fantasy is that it breaches our environmental commitments under various free trade agreements, including the NZ-EU FTA, which requires us to meet our Paris commitments and not weaken our environmental protections. And it turns out that MFAT agrees:

Legal advice from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade states the Government’s plans to repeal the 2018 ban on new offshore oil and gas exploration will “likely” breach New Zealand’s obligations in recent free trade agreements.

Deals with major trade partners such as the European Union and the United Kingdom prohibit New Zealand from reducing environmental protections to encourage trade or investment. Though officials said the risk of a country taking a case against New Zealand was low, the policy was “likely” inconsistent with these provisions.

National apparently doesn't care, leaning heavily on that low chance of anyone bringing a case. Which I guess shows how committed they are to the "rules-based international order" they keep talking about. But we're a pretty poor international partner if we only keep our commitments if they are actually enforced against us, and I think most kiwis would expect better from our government than that. We've made promises, and we should keep them. Only business weasels and sociopaths would try and cheat.

But also, it seems that if we want the direction of this government to change, we should be doing our utmost to ensure that these countries do take action. After all, National has said its the only thing they'll listen to. We should take them at their word. And if it results in sanctions on the dirty dairy industry, so much the better.

Climate Change: A strapped chicken "review"

As part of its coalition agreement, the climate-change denier National government promised its climate-change denier coalition partners a review of our agricultural methane reduction target. Today they announced the members of their "independent" review, and released its terms of reference. I'm not familiar with the academic records of the panel, but at least two of them seem to be "no net warming" cultists and have pre-determined positions. But the real problem is with the terms of reference, which commit the panel to "deliver an independent review of methane science and the 2050 target for consistency with no additional warming from agricultural methane emissions", and specifically

estimates of biogenic methane emissions reductions needed in 2050 and 2100 to achieve and maintain a state of no additional warming from New Zealand’s biogenic methane emissions relative to 2017 levels of warming.

[Emphasis added]

So, their "independent" review has been instructed from the outset to overturn the existing targets, and recommend ones which lock in 2017 levels of agricultural emissions. Those levels were already unsustainable (criminally so), but its also obviously going to have an impact on whether we achieve our Paris NDC of a 50% reduction in net greenhouse gas levels from 2005. Basically, locking in 2017 agricultural emissions and committing to doing nothing to reduce them increases our chances of missing that target, and increases the costs of doing so. Those are already estimated at up to $24 billion; National's criminal decision will push that even higher. But the review won't be considering this - in fact, they're specifically forbidden from considering the "implications of any new proposed target on the broader climate strategy". So they'll be required to produce dishonest, one-sided advice, which climate-change denying politicians will then use to cover their ecocidal decision not to act.

But its not just our Paris commitments we'll be reneging on. Article 19 of the NZ-EU FTA binds both parties to take urgent action to combat climate change, to implement the Paris Agreement and NDC commitments, and to

refrain from any action or omission that materially defeats the object and purpose of the Paris Agreement.

Rewriting your targets to undermine your NDC and lock in agricultural emissions at 2017 levels seems to be exactly such an action. I wonder what the EU will think of it?

Labour fucks us on copyright again

Last night the government concluded a free trade agreement with the European Union. I'm pretty meh about FTAs, largely because they seem to be a backdoor for pro-corporate irregulation than actual trade now, so I wasn't enthusiastic to begin with (though on the plus side this one does at least make the Paris climate agreement legally enforceable, meaning that if farmers don't cut their emissions they can be cut out of the market). And then I read the bit in the "key outcomes" summary about copyright:

New Zealand has agreed to extend copyright term by 20 years for authors, performers and producers. New Zealand will also extend the protection it gives to digital locks (technological protection measures) to include preventing a person undertaking an act to circumvent those locks other than in limited circumstances. New Zealand will have four years from entry into force of the Agreement to implement these changes to the Copyright Act 1994.

Labour had already sold us out on term extension in their FTA with the UK, but at least that had a 15 year transition period. Now we'll have four. And with the FTA expected to enter into force around 2024, that means nothing will enter the public domain in New Zealand from 2028 or so. Immediate casualties will include Mary Scott (whose works would otherwise enter the public domain in NZ in 2030), Dennis Glover (2031), Bruce Mason (2033) and Ngaio Marsh (2033). They're literally going to be locking our culture away from us, forbidding the production of adaptations and derivative works for a further twenty years.

And they're doing this when the government admits there is no benefit to New Zealand from term extension, and that it does not further incentivise the creation of new works - the latter meaning that term extension violates the Bill of Rights Act. They're also doing it when MFAT and MBIE had told parliament back in April that they would "provide advice on mitigating factors that may guard against the potential harm of the copyright extension term". Against that backdrop, cutting a deal to do it even faster seems a lot like lying to Parliament to me.

Only fools make deals with liars

Northern Ireland went to the polls last week, resulting in Sinn Féin becoming the largest party, the first time an Irish party has done so. Naturally, the unionists are not taking this well, and are threatening to use their minority-veto to prevent any government being formed. They're also demanding the immediate revocation of the Northern Ireland Protocol, the part of the UK's Brexit deal covering the UK's land border with the EU in Ireland. And of course the Tories in Westminster are going to do it:

Liz Truss is reportedly preparing draft legislation that would unilaterally scrap key parts of the Northern Ireland protocol, removing the need for checks on goods between Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

No bill was announced in the Queen’s speech on Tuesday but the foreign secretary is reported to have asked officials to prepare the draft, which would put the UK in breach of its treaty obligations.

As well as scrapping checks, the draft legislation would also take away powers of the European court of justice and remove all requirement for Northern Irish businesses to follow EU regulations.

Effectively, this is the UK tearing up its Brexit deal and saying "fuck you" to the EU - a deal made less only three years ago. This is obviously going to create problems with the EU, but it goes wider than that. To point out the obvious, Aotearoa recently concluded a free trade agreement with the UK - one with some controversial provisions. And the UK has just told us, and the world, that we have no reason to believe that they will keep up their end of it.

This is not acceptable. Only fools make deals with liars, and if we want treaties to be kept, we need to engage in collective action to incentivise keeping them. If the UK cheats on its commitments to the EU, we should suspend implementation of the FTA until they reverse that position and meet all their commitments. Otherwise, we have only ourselves to blame when they break their word to us as well.

The Parliamentary rubberstamp

The Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee has reported back on the NZ-UK free trade agreement, and as expected, rubberstamped the whole thing. But then, the executive deliberately puts them in a position where they have no alternative, otherwise New Zealand is "going back on its word". The question of whether they had any democratic legitimacy to make such promises in the first place meanwhile goes completely unexamined. And then they wonder why so many people are suspicious of secretly-negotiated "free trade agreements" and reflexively oppose them...

On the major issue of copyright term extension - an out-of-the-blue, unconsulted and so illegitimate change which violates our Bill of Rights Act - the rubberstamp noted the opposition to the change (virtually every submission which addressed the issue opposed it), but made no recommendations. They did however note that

the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade have agreed to provide advice on mitigating factors that may guard against the potential harm of the copyright extension term.

The most obvious means of "mitigation"? Not doing it in the first place. But since that apparently isn't an option, here's some suggestions on how to reduce the harm MFAT has inflicted on us, culled from the submissions:

1. Take the full 15 years to implement the change, as allowed by the treaty;
2. Make it apply only to works published after it comes into force, or to works by people born after it comes into force;
3. Make it apply only by way of a work-specific extension / renewal process (so if your heirs don't renew at the end of your life + 50 term, the work falls into the public domain).

(In addition, I'd suggest using that 15-year period to work towards a new global copyright treaty to shorten terms to life + 25 years, making this shitty deal moot).

The deal will require legislation to implement, which the government has indicated it will introduce later this year (which suggests MBIE and MFAT don't have a lot of time to work, and their "mitigation" advice will be limited by that, especially if MFAT disrupts the process to protect its deal). This does mean that we will have a chance to submit on the changes, and the above may be useful suggestions for a submission. But we're still going to have the problem of the underlying dynamic of MFAT making promises without our permission or consent, and Parliament being unwilling to call them on it. Addressing that - and the issue of our undemocratic foreign policy in general - is going to need bigger changes, to empower the legislature over the executive and bind the latter to Parliament's will.

Copyright term extension violates the BORA

Last night I did a last-minute submission on the international treaty examination of the UK-NZ Free Trade Agreement, focusing on the issue of Labour's sneaky extension of the copyright term. After making the obvious points that this was not in our interests (the FTA's National Interest Analysis is pretty explicit on that) and that it was undemocratic to make this sort of change via an FTA, I noticed that the NIA said there was "[n]o effect on human rights in New Zealand". Which led to another point: extending the copyright term violates the BORA.

Copyright is a restriction on freedom of expression. Restricting the right to disseminate and distribute copyrighted works to their owners is clearly a limitation on the right to receive and impart information affirmed in section 14 of the BORA. It does this so that creators can make money and earn a living, thus incentivising the creation of further works.

As we've seen in the case of vaccine mandates, a limitation on a right may be justifiable if it is a "reasonable limi[t] prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society". This means that it must serve an important public purpose, and be rationally connected to and proportionate to that purpose, and impair the right no more than is reasonably necessary for that purpose.

Incentivising the creation of cultural works is clearly an important public purpose, and a limited period of exclusivity is clearly rationally connected to that purpose. The question is one of proportionality: how long should that period of exclusivity be? There is obviously a range of possible answers here, depending on how the copyright term is structured, but the important thing to note here is that we are talking about a change. And it is clear that if a longer term would not result in a greater incentive for the creation of new works, then it is disproportionate. And on that point, we can just look at the NIA, which says explicitly:

there is no evidence that increasing the term of protection for copyright and related rights would incentivise either the creation of new copyright works or the dissemination of older works (which are the primary policy goals of copyright protection).

This is effectively an admission of disproportionality, and therefore of inconsistency with the BORA. Under the BORA, Parliament is the first guardian of our rights, in that it is supposed to scrutinise proposed legislation and not pass laws which are inconsistent with it. It needs to do its job here, and reject England's copyright extension. And if it doesn't, then this seems to be a prime case for a declaration of inconsistency in future.

Meanwhile, I'm wondering where the hell MFAT gets off on proposing a treaty which is inconsistent with our constitution (because that's what the BORA is: a key part of our constitution). The answer is probably that they just didn't think about it - FTA's are about money, not human rights. But its their job to think about it: the BORA imposes standing obligations on all branches of our government at all times. At the least, this means that it should not make agreements contrary to the BORA as a matter of public policy, but I would go further and argue that it does not have the legal power to make such agreements at all (basicly running the "contracts are subject to statutory obligations" line of Wyatt Co (NZ) Ltd v Queenstown-Lakes District Council, but on MFAT and the BORA, rather than on a local body and the OIA). Either way, MFAT appears to have overstepped here, and we need to know what safeguards they have to prevent them from doing so in future.

Locking away our culture

Back in October, we learned that the government had reached an "in-principle" free trade agreement with the UK. This morning, we learned that they signed it. Unfortunately the deal includes an extension of the copyright term from 50 to 70 years, threatening to lock away major cultural works which are soon due out of copyright (such as James K Baxter and Bruce Mason, plus Tolkien, Christie and Wodehouse from overseas) for an additional 20 years. Its pure rent-seeking by the copyright-mafia, a 40% increase in how long they can continue to collect rent from the works they own. And it serves no public purpose; in the long list of "disadvantages" of the move, the National Interest Analysis (p 70) notes that

there is no evidence that increasing the term of protection for copyright and related rights would incentivise either the creation of new copyright works or the dissemination of older works (which are the primary policy goals of copyright protection).

The sole good news is that the extension will not apply to works already in the public domain. Combined with a 15 year implementation period, this means that if we drag our feet, we can get those works out and in public so that everyone can use them. That implementation period is also 15 years we have to lobby for the change to be reversed, and for a shorter copyright term in general.

So why did we sign up for it. Essentially because MFAT negotiators gain status and prestige from cutting deals, and saw this as something they could just trade away. But it also seems to be a perfect example of undemocratic (and hence illegitimate) foreign policy, and an example of why we need transparency in trade negotiations: so our government - or our unelected bureaucrats - can't trade stuff away without our consent.

Labour's sneaky copyright deal

The big news this morning is that the government has reached an in-principle FTA with the UK, with the usual benefits for farmers (and therefore incentives to increase emissions). The wisdom of making an agreement with a government which literally admitted last week that it makes agreements in bad faith with no intention to stick to them is highly questionable. But there's another reason to oppose this: Because Labour has sneakily screwed the rest of us:

New Zealand has also agreed to bolster its copyright laws. Performer and artists' rights will be expanded, and a further 20 years added to copyright terms. This means, for instance, an artist can expect to retain copyright of their work for 70 years after their death, instead of the current 50 years.

What this means in practice: major works expected to come out of copyright in the next decade, like Tolkien, Wodehouse, and Christie (to name a few high-profile foreign examples) or James K Baxter and Bruce Mason (the obvious local ones) won't. This not only robs us of the wider use of those works, but also of the opportunity to build on them (which is part of what culture is: building on what has gone before). That's a real cultural cost, effectively a theft from our society. In terms of financial costs, the government looked at the question of an extended copyright term when the US was trying to foist it on us as part of the TPPA and found it would come at significant cost:

However, New Zealand is a significant net importer of copyright works so extending the copyright term is likely to come at a significant net cost. Any missed royalties to New Zealand copyright holders as a result of the phase-in are likely to be dwarfed by the savings to New Zealand consumers and second-generation creators as a result of lower royalty payments to overseas copyright holders.

The costs were so bad that when MBIE started reviewing copyright a few years later - a process which is still supposed to be ongoing - it took extending the term off the table from the outset as "we do not consider that extending the copyright term would bring net benefits to New Zealand" and said that it "would need to become aware of compelling evidence to the contrary to have us reconsider this position". I guess the new "compelling evidence" was that "Boris asked for it".

We should never agree to any trade deal which extends copyright terms, or otherwise introduces US copyright bullshit. And if that's the cost of an agreement with the (double-dealing, dishonest UK), we should tell them to fuck off.

How's that trade war going?

Last month, Donald Trump started a trade war with the rest of the world. So how's it going? Badly:

Harley-Davidson said on Monday that it will move production of EU-bound motorcycles out of the US in a bid to combat costs linked to tariffs on various American products.

The EU is Harley-Davidson’s second biggest market in terms of revenues outside of the US.

The motorcycle maker said the tariffs, which came into effect on 22 June in response to levies imposed by Donald Trump on steel and aluminium imports, had risen from 6 per cent to 31 per cent.

This translates into a cost of around $2,200 (£1,700) per motorcycle exported from the US to the EU.

Not mentioned: US production is probably facing higher input costs due to the steel and aluminium tariffs as well. So moving some production away from that seems like a good idea.

Naturally, this is the opposite of what Trump wanted when he started sticking tariffs on other countries. But its what happens in a globalised economy where your biggest market might not be domestic. And the longer Trump's tariffs continue, the more likely other companies are to follow.

We should tell Trump to take a hike

Last month, New Zealand formally signed the successor to the TPPA, the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership. The deal had few benefits for New Zealand, and the primary one seems to be MFAT negotiators not feeling left out, but it had one saving virtue: America wasn't involved. And that meant that it was merely a bit shit, rather than being actively toxic due to US IP bullshit. But now, having pulled out of the TPP and left the other countries to negotiate amongst themselves, Donald Trump wants back in:

US President Donald Trump told top administration officials Thursday to look at rejoining the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the multination trade agreement he pulled the United States out of shortly after taking office.

Rejoining the pact - now also known as the CPTPP - would be a major reversal as Trump escalates a trade conflict with China. The Pacific Rim trade deal was intended by the Obama administration as a way to counter China's influence, but Trump criticised the pact as a candidate and pulled the United States out of the pact in early 2017.

Trump gave the new orders to US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow during a meeting with lawmakers and governors on trade issues, according to two GOP senators in attendance.

Senator John Thune said that he and others at the table raised the point that "if you really want to get China's attention, one way to do it is start doing business with all the people they're doing business with in the region: their competitors."

Trump then told Lighthizer and Kudlow to "take a look at getting us back into that agreement, on our terms of course," Thune said. "He was very I would say bullish about that."

"On our terms" means taking the negotiated position (currently suspended) as a baseline, and then demanding even more regulatory subsidies for US businesses. Which means making the deal even worse for New Zealand (and presumably everybody else as well).

The good news is that the US's re-entry requires the unanimous consent of all CPTPP parties. We can - and should - tell Donald Trump to take a hike.

A meh deal for New Zealand

Trade Minister David Parker has signed the successor to the TPPA, the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership, in Chile. Meh. What I really hated about the TPPA (other than the secretive and undemocratic manner in which it was negotiated behind our backs and without our consent) was US copyright bullshit and ISDS clauses. The former has been "suspended", at least until the US wants to join up, and the latter has been weakened slightly and further limited with respect to New Zealand by side agreements with other countries, but is still there. Meanwhile, the deal is worth $1.2 - $4 billion a year in 20 years time - which is basicly nothing. While being praised as economic salvation by farmers, its net effect when fully implemented is so small as to be lost in currency fluctuations.

So colour me unimpressed. Sure, it could be a lot worse. We could have a 70 year copyright term and US pharmaceutical companies destroying Pharmac, for example. But given the meagre gains and the damage getting them has and will inflict on our democracy, I'd really rather we hadn't signed the thing at all.

Meh

The trade deal formerly known as the TPPA will be signed by its remaining parties in March. Apparently, there have been some more changes - Canada has kept negotiating, as opposed to MFAT, who was willing to sign whatever was put in front of them, no matter how bad - and the truly obnoxious features of the deal (ISDS and US copyright bullshit) were removed or "suspended" in the previous round of negotiations. So now, instead of a deal which was actively bad for New Zealand, we have one which merely seems a bit meh. Oh, free trade weenies are excited, but for the rest of us, it means squat, more a bullet dodged than anything else. And if that's the best we get from free trade, you really have to wonder why we bother with it at all, given the democratic cost of making these deals.

If we learn anything from this experience, it should be that we need more democracy in our foreign policy. This sort of international agreement needs a solid democratic mandate - and that means transparency. The current process, in which deals are made in secret, and our governments lie to us about what's in them, is simply not acceptable in a democracy. It has to change.

Saved by Canada

APEC was held over the weekend, during which various countries were expected to make a final push to resurrect the Trans-Pacific Partnership. On Friday night, it looked like it was dead, and that Canada had saved us from a shitty US trade deal. By Sunday morning, it was alive again - but Canada has still probably saved us.

There were three bits of the TPPA that most people objected to: the anti-democratic Investor-State Dispute clause, under which multinational (US) corporations could sue countries for regulations which affected their (real or imagined) profits; US patent pork which threatened Pharmac; and general US copyright bullshit, including a mandatory copyright term extension to protect Mickey Mouse, along with various attacks on fair use and file sharing. But thanks to Canada, all of that shit is gone. Technically, its only "suspended", and could be back in if the US ever rejoins the agreement, but that's about as likely as Trump not sticking his foot in his mouth next time he opens it, so for all practical purposes these provisions are dead. So, we've got an FTA shorn of its most objectionable parts. Whether the deal is still worth it for New Zealand without US market access remains to be seen, but in the previous analysis the US bullshit was a significant cost, so it might be (whether you trust MFAT's analysts to do a fair analysis when institutionally their prestige rests on the deal being accepted is another question, of course).

The government has been clear that the new TPPA will have to go back to Parliament - that is, that it is a different deal from the "Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, done at Auckland on 4 February 2016", so National's TPPA law can never come into effect. While they're now part of the government which has agreed to this, I don't expect NZ First and the Greens to give it an easy ride through select committee, and I expect the numbers to be heavily scrutinised. If they don't like it, then I guess Labour will just have to ask National for support instead.

Meanwhile, if this experience has shown us anything, its how badly National sold us out on this issue. A better deal was possible the moment the US walked away, but National was perfectly happy to sign the TPPA as written, complete with US IP bullshit. Its also shown us how undemocratic our foreign policy is, and how secret negotiations do nothing but enable our politicians to lie to us. This isn't good enough. In order for such agreements to be legitimate, they need the consent of the people - and that means full transparency during negotiations, and explicit Parliamentary approval not just for ratification, but for signing. Anything less is buying into the arrogant ideology that foreign policy is for kings, and something us dirty peasants must be kept in the dark about, because we couldn't possibly know what we want. And that is simply undemocratic monarchical bullshit.

A bad deal

Bill English is in Japan at the moment to talk about reviving the TPPA. Meanwhile, his government has confirmed the worst: that they want to revive the deal-as-signed, complete with US IP bullshit:

The Government has confirmed that countries not signed up to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, including the United States, will be able to reap the benefit of concessions New Zealand has made on pharmaceuticals.

Yet New Zealand will not benefit from better access to the US market in return, because president Donald Trump pulled it out of the pact.

Ironically, the concessions on the way drug agency Pharmac operates were made to make the 12-nation trade deal more palatable to the US.

So, we pay all of the costs, and get none of the benefits, of a deal that was pretty marginal to begin with. So why are we doing this? It makes no sense at all. This is a bad deal, and one we should be rejecting.

A zombie trade agreement

The US election campaign and election of Donald Trump killed off the TPPA. But now Japan is trying to raise it from the dead:

The ambitious trans-Pacific trade plan scuppered after the United States withdrew under its new president could be salvaged under a deal suggested by Japan.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) could be created with at least five nations on board, including New Zealand, Japan and Australia, instead of 12, sources involved in the negotiations told Kyodo News.

[...]

However, at a meeting of top negotiators from the 11 parties, Tokyo pushed the argument for a TPPA without the US by changing the original agreement, the sources said.

A trade deal without the US - and without US intellectual property and corporate power bullshit - might be worth doing. Or it might not. But if its just the same deal, on the same terms, its not even worth considering. The TPPA was marginal even on MFAT's optimistic assumptions; with all the costs and fewer benefits, its a deal we should refuse.

But why would we want that?

Radio New Zealand warns that a post-TPPA trade deal with the USA would lead to higher pharamceutical prices, as the US enforces the "right" of Big Pharma to price gouge:

New Zealand may have to swallow higher drug prices if it wants a trade deal with the United States.

US President Donald Trump had already set out one bottom line for a bilateral trade deal with prospective suitors: a 30-day break clause in agreements, which New Zealand Prime Minister Bill English called unattractive.

This week Mr Trump told American pharmaceutical executives that other countries had not paid their fair share, and US trade policy would change to ensure that happens.

"We're going to be ending global freeloading. Foreign price controls reduce the resources of American drug companies to finance drug and R&D innovation. I think you people know very well, it's very unfair to this country," Mr Trump said.

"Our trade policy will prioritize that foreign countries pay their fair share for US-manufactured drugs."

But why would we sign up for that? The TPPA was so loaded with American bullshit (longer copyright terms, regulatory subsidies to Big Pharma, and of course the investor-state disputes clause) that there was basicly nothing in it for New Zealand. It was a deal not worth doing. This would be even worse. So why would we even open negotiations, let alone agree to such a deal?

Dead and gone

US President Donald Trump has officially withdrawn the USA from the Trans-Pacific partnership Agreement. Good. The TPPA was a shit deal for New Zealand, which our craven government signed up to essentially for fear of being left out. Now the US is out, we're free to talk to the other parties and maybe try and negotiate a better deal, one which brings us actual benefits and doesn't saddle us with American IP totalitarianism.

Meanwhile, I'm wondering what happens to the law National passed to enact the TPPA. Its commencement clause says that it can only come into force on the date that the TPPA does. Obviously, that's no longer possible. Unlike other bills with this sort of structure, there isn't a fallback date, or a deadline after which it self-repeals if not in force. So it looks like the TPPA's legacy will be a dead law hanging around on the statute books until a future Parliament recognises reality and repeals it.

...with a stake through its heart

US President-Elect Donald Trump has announced that he will unsign the TPPA on his first day in office:

US President-elect Donald Trump has released a video laying out actions he'll take on his first day in office on January 20, including withdrawing the US from the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal.

Good riddance. The TPP was a shit deal which gained us nothing. And now its dead and buried with a stake through its heart, maybe we can do something better - something without the odious subsidies and anti-democratic clauses that the US demanded, for example.

Meanwhile over on Pundit, Andrew Geddis looks at the legality of John Key's plan to try and bring the existing law into force without the USA. His assessment? It would be illegal. When Parliament said "this only comes into force when the TPPA does", it meant it. So if Key wants to try that, he'll either have to fight it in the courts, or convince Parliament to amend the bill to allow it to be brought into force in other circumstances - which in turn means convincing us that a regulatory subsidies for the US copyright mafia and Big Pharma are worth it when we're getting absolutely nothing in return.