KEY POINTS:
Trade Minister Tim Groser has (at first blush) made a daring gambit by formally requesting the European Union's top agricultural trade duo to consider suspending the escalation of export subsidies.
Groser confirms he asked both EU Trade Commissioner Baroness Catherine Ashton and EU Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel to "consider the move" during his recent visit to Europe.
The Trade Minister's initiative could be seen as "tilting at windmills" given the European Union's vexed history of wrapping its farmers in protectionist wool at the merest sign of domestic pressure.
But applying moral suasion to halt protectionism can work.
Baroness Ashton and Fischer Boel have a raft of constituent countries (and farmers) to keep onside.
But it seems a tad hypocritical for the EU to welcome the Obama Administration's decision to back off the "Buy American" provisions in the US stimulus package if it simultaneously continues to revert to protectionism on its own patch.
Those nations, like New Zealand, which have gone through the hard yards of making their agriculture sector's efficient deserve to be able to harvest the competitive advantages they have secured.
Combating nascent protectionism so our trading lines stay open is a major challenge right now for New Zealand and other countries in the Asia-Pacific region.
Protectionism is also the theme du jour at this week's meeting of the Apec Business Advisory Council in Wellington where a proposal to open an Apec register to record "nascent protectionism" within the 21 APEC economies is under debate. Business representatives from the Asia-Pacific are considering how they stiffen their own political leaders' wills to make sure that any promises made in international forums to keep their markets open and trade flowing don't fall prey to domestic pressure.
In New Zealand's case, there are initiatives on the bilateral or regional free trade deal front which show promise. The FTA between the Asean (South-East Asia) bloc and New Zealand and Australia is due to be signed on February 27.
Officials are hopeful that negotiations on the proposed Korea-New Zealand FTA will be formally started during an expected visit by Korean President Lee Myung-bak, and, the first round of talks on the expanded Trans Pacific Partnership are scheduled in Queenstown next month.
The US, Peru and Australia are due to join up with what used to be called the Pacific 4 pact - NZ, Chile, Brunei and Singapore - to form the new Trans Pacific Partnership. But the Obama Administration has yet to publicly confirm it will run with its predecessor's agenda on this score.
Then there is Groser's prospective visit to India (he proposes to take a few key business people) to further explore a bilateral FTA. The Hong Kong talks are also back on the agenda.
All of this will require considerable bureaucratic concentration.
But the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade may miss the boat if it does not get the right officials in place fast.
Take the deputy-secretary's role that MFAT had been keeping warm until Crawford Falconer returns from Geneva where he has been in charge of the World Trade Organisation's agriculture committee negotiations.
Falconer's appointment to the top MFAT role was announced last August.
But late last year - when it seemed that red-blooded statements by G20 and Apec political leaders might give the WTO's Doha Development Agenda round a fillip - Groser announced that Falconer's Geneva stay would be extended to help ensure momentum was maintained in efforts to conclude the Doha agriculture negotiations "over the next few months".
To get round some delicate MFAT politics, Falconer was appointed a special WTO ambassador meantime, while top trade negotiator David Walker who was destined to be NZ's sole WTO Ambassador moved into that role.
Expectations were that Falconer would ultimately return to Wellington and take up the deputy secretary's role. But the G20 and Apec leaders did not live up to their rhetoric and Falconer is now staying on at the wish of the WTO membership in what seems a rather open-dated arrangement.
Soundings indicate the business community - which had foreseen this prospect - had earlier lobbied former Trade Minister Phil Goff to keep Walker here as deputy-secretary and leave Falconer in Geneva, rather than the reverse.
Walker has major street cred as a successful negotiator: He chalked up the China FTA and was responsible for progressing Transpac. With the major issues facing New Zealand, his talent could be used here.
Chilean Ambassador Nigel Fyfe is slotted to take over the MFAT trade division, but won't for another month or so.
The upshot is that Groser appears to be not only acting as Trade Minister but an uber-official.
In ordinary times this might work as a transitory arrangement.
But as ABAC's leadership emphasised yesterday, this is not "business as usual". The global economic meltdown has exacerbated the protectionist tendency.
If trade ministers, like Groser, want business to champion trade liberalisation they must have their own bureaucratic "vectors" to make sure the job gets done.
