Stephen Jacobi: If ever there was a right time for a free trade deal, it's now

Opinion

The time for free trade with the United States through the Trans Pacific Partnership is now.

That is because to recover from the economic crisis we need to reduce the costs of doing business, expand the flow of trade and investment and find new ways to meet consumers' needs.

It is now because the Trans Pacific Partnership provides the only viable template for freer and fairer trade in the Asia-Pacific region and an opportunity to address the confusing "noodle bowl" of sometimes conflicting trade agreements.

It is now because the business community in the US is behind the partnership as evidenced by testimony from organisations at hearings in Washington on March 4.

It is now because the eight partnership participants (Australia, Brunei, Chile, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United States and Vietnam) are willing to work together to craft a new-generation agreement including labour and environment provisions.

A new US President, wanting to recover American leadership and prestige, should not turn his back on this group of like-minded countries willing to work together on an area as critical to economic recovery as trade.

All of these reasons give confidence that the negotiating process, delayed at the request of the US, will be resumed once a review of trade policy undertaken by new US Trade Representative Ron Kirk has been completed.

According to the Administration's recent statement to Congress, that review will comprise "extensive outreach and discourse with the public on whether these agreements advance the interests of the United States and our trading partners".

In fact, in respect to Trans Pacific Partnership, that process has been under way for the best part of a year now.

It includes the public hearings held on March 4 in which a range of organisations took part. Predictably the anti-globalisation movement spoke against partnership, as did the National Milk Producers Federation and some textile and footwear manufacturing groups opposed to the inclusion of Vietnam.

Leading business organisations like the US Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, the National Foreign Trade Council and the Coalition for Services Industries spoke strongly in favour.

It is true that there is opposition to partnership in Congress. But there is also strong bipartisan support as evidenced by the recent letter to the President signed by 45 members, Democrat and Republican.

Influential Senate finance committee chairman Max Baucus has also given his support for the partnership, saying: "The sooner the Obama Administration commits to TPP negotiations, the sooner those negotiations can grow into a broader regional deal that encompasses Japan and other countries with greater commercial impact."

And in a meeting with the New Democrat Coalition on March 10, President Obama is reported to have made it clear that he was a supporter of "free and fair trade" and that he was "in no shape or form an isolationist".

Against the backdrop of the global economic crisis, when protectionism threatens to choke the recovery even before it has begun, it is time for like-minded countries, like New Zealand and the United States, to come together.

It is time to develop new-generation agreements which open new markets and keep trade and investment flowing, which address new public concerns while avoiding excessive and self-defeating regulation.

We have that opportunity in the Trans Pacific Partnership and we are confident the Obama Administration will see it that way.

* Stephen Jacobi is executive director of the New Zealand United States Council, founded in 2001 to advocate trade expansion and economic links.