Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters speaking to media after sacking Phil Goff. Video / Mark Mitchell
Opinion by Thomas Coughlan
Thomas Coughlan, Political Editor at the New Zealand Herald, loves applying a political lens to people's stories and explaining the way things like transport and finance touch our lives.
Trump has put pressure on European nations to lift defence spending.
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has hinted strongly New Zealand’s defence spending will increase.
Foreign Minister Winston Peters took no pleasure in sacking Phil Goff from his post as High Commissioner to London this week.
Peters, rarely one to shy away from a fight, looked almost pained on his way into the House on Thursday as he explained to reportersGoff’s remarks made his position untenable.
The pair have served beside each other in foreign affairs roles before. In Helen Clark’s final term, with Peters as foreign affairs minister and Goff as trade minister. There was occasional tension then, too. Goff successfully concluded negotiations for a Free Trade Agreement with China, perhaps his crowning policy agreement, which Peters and NZ First opposed (with the Greens and the Māori Party - what a coalition.)
The position tested the extent to which Peters’ right to disagree with the Government on issues outside his portfolio (in this case trade, as distinct from foreign affairs). Nevertheless, the pair emerged from the Government with mutual respect.
The comments that led to Goff’s sacking were poor form. While the subtext to his question, that President Donald Trump is a dangerous idiot (to paraphrase), is one of the most refreshingly accurate descriptors of the President tendered by anyone currently serving in an official post, it was clearly undiplomatic.
While it may have punctuated the ugly symphony of kowtowing that has characterised global diplomatic relations with the Trump administration, the remarks did nothing to advance New Zealand’s interests and plenty to impede them.
Diplomacy is the art of letting other people have your way.
In the service of this art, diplomats need to develop a healthy appetite for their own tongues. Goff, unfortunately, tripped over his.
The timing of the remarks was unfortunate, too. Peters will shortly depart for the United States, where he is expected to have meetings with the administration. It would be logical for these to include a meeting with his counterpart, Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
It’s cliche that we live in challenging times. That’s true, but it obscures the fact that what makes these times challenging continues to change.
Foreign Minister Winston Peters and then-US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo during a visit to Washington DC in 2019. Photo / US State Dept
In the past, we might have said New Zealand’s challenge has been maintaining a strong and stable security relationship with the US, our most powerful and (mostly) like-minded security partner, while deepening ties with China, our most important trading partner.
That clean dichotomy is becoming messier.
China is not what it was as a trading partner, with exports to the country for the year to September 2024 below 2021 levels after falling for three straight years. China is throwing its weight around, too. The threat of economic coercion (China throwing its weight around by blocking certain exports) is ever-present.
The United States is looking fairly attractive from a trade perspective. Exports are up 50% on 2021 levels, soaring from $9.9b back then to $15.7b in the year to September 2024.
That trend may cause one to hope it may replace China — but let’s not get ahead of ourselves, the powerful dairy farmers of Wisconsin will never allow the US to buy great quantities of what we’re selling and the Trump administration is not beyond using economic coercion of its own, particularly if they think a country is getting a little too good a deal.
Things get worse still. The Chinese Navy’s recent jaunt south with three ships (and maybe a submarine) showed China is quite happy to project power in our region — it’s a more mighty strategic adversary than before. Meanwhile, the US is beginning to look like a flaky security partner. Even the US’ Nato allies, such as Germany, France and the UK, are pondering what their futures will look like should the US not make good on its commitments.
In sum, everything is worse: trade with China is declining, while the country becomes more dangerous. Trade with the US is growing, but becoming more uncertain and it can no longer be relied on as a reliable security partner.
Illustration / Guy Body
Peters’ job is to carve out a place for New Zealand in this uncertain world — and he must, at all costs, ensure New Zealand avoids the tariffs that Trump seems happy to apply to countries he does not like. Trade with the US is one of the bright spots in an otherwise gloomy economic picture for New Zealand. Peters needs to keep it that way.
He has some equities.
The US is turning inward. In Rubio’s confirmation hearings, the common refrain was putting the safety and security of the United States first.
The clear signal New Zealand is willing to step up on defence is probably beneficial in this regard, with New Zealand making clear that the Defence Capability Report and forthcoming Budget will chart a path close to the magic number of 2% of GDP. Defence spending has come up in previous engagements with the US and it would appear Trump is willing to barter market access for defence spending.
Peters also has the benefit of never having said anything impolitic about Trump — a rare feat. Peters has erred on the side of realism, and when he has spoken about Trump, his words have tended towards warmth. It won’t hurt that Peters, like Rubio, is a lifelong China hawk. Who knows, if the subject of Phil Goff comes up, Peters might have the opportunity to re-litigate his decades old scepticism of the China FTA with the administration (Peters believed the FTA did not deliver good enough access for New Zealand — being ripped off by China is an anxiety members of the Trump administration share).
Peters will also want some information from the administration: what’s the plan for USAID, which has a presence in the Pacific, what does the administration think of Aukus Pillar 2 (Trump’s intentions seem unclear).
The challenge for Peters is that these foreign policy gains come at domestic cost. As Peters told members of the diplomatic corps in Wellington last month, there are no votes in the foreign affairs portfolio. Filleting budget lines to nearly double defence spending will come at a cost to other parts of the budget. The Government clearly thinks this is a price worth paying if it avoids upsetting the trading relationship with the US (funny thing — we used to talk about getting a trade deal with the US, now winning is defined by simply preserving the status quo).
Likewise, Labour’s Aukus opposition is gaining ground. The British are pondering whether their nuclear deterrent (which, much unlike Aukus is nuclear armed rather than simply nuclear powered) is so reliant on the US that it leaves them vulnerable to its perfidy. The French, who have maintained their own deterrent (as every New Zealander and member of this continent is all too painfully aware), have been proved right and may now extend the nuclear umbrella to much of Europe. In the 1960s, President Charles de Gaulle doubted that, were the deterrent ever called upon, any American President would ever trade New York for Paris, endangering America’s security for that of an ally. Touché, General.
Anything could happen.
Almost every foreign minister and world leader will have watched President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s White House dressing down thinking, “It could have been me”.
They’re right to think that.
Editors on Trump’s reality TV show The Apprentice recalled he often made erratic nonsensical decisions, keeping contestants who had performed poorly and “firing” top candidates he happened to dislike, sometimes simply because he did not like the way they looked. After Trump became President, some of those editors told American media it was their job to use the magic of television editing to make these judgments make sense.
Peters is about to walk into that man’s Washington. He’s as well prepared as anyone can be.
We’d better hope they like how he looks.
Thomas Coughlan is Deputy Political Editor and covers politics from Parliament. He has worked for the Herald since 2021 and has worked in the press gallery since 2018.
