Lillian
Hanly, Political reporter
Winston
Peters has chastised the prime minister for his
spree of phone calls with world leaders about the US trade
war, and advised politicians to “tone down”.
The
foreign minister told RNZ Christopher Luxon had not
consulted with him ahead of the calls, adding “I hope that
he’ll get my message and he’ll call me next
time”.
Luxon made a speech to the Wellington Chamber
of Commerce on Thursday morning and proposed the European
Commission work more closely with countries signed up to the
Trans-Pacific trade pact – known as the CPTPP – to champion
the rules-based trade order and provide some stability and
certainty.
It came after the United States retaliated
against China by hiking tariffs to 125 percent, while
placing a 90-day pause on retaliatory tariffs for other
countries. The US has since upped the China tariff to 145
percent.
Luxon followed his Wellington speech up with
a series of phone calls that night with Indo-Pacific leaders
and the European Union to gauge how they’re interpreting the
tit-for-tat trade war and implications it might have for
their economies.
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Speaking from Tonga on Friday, Peters
offered some advice to the prime minister.
“Markets
lose their nerve. Share market speculators lose their nerve.
Politicians should not lose their nerve, and that’s my
advice,” he told RNZ.
“There’s no need to react at
this point in time. Let’s first find out what we’re dealing
with, let the dust settle in.
“My advocacy from the
day this matter came up with the Trump tariffs – our job is
to be ultra careful, ultra forward thinking in the interest
of, guess what, the New Zealand economy, that’s what
matters, not our egos,” he said.
“So my advice to
politicians is tone down, wait till you see and know what’s
going on.”
Speaking to Checkpoint Friday, Trade
Minister Todd McClay said the prime minister and Peters are
‘saying similar things’.
“We’re being very calm as a
government.”
McClay said he, Peters and Luxon have all
been talking to various people around the world to get
feedback on the tariffs and trade war.
“The PM is
right to be talking to prime ministers in other parts of the
world, countries that we trade with, that have strong
trading relationships with.
“If you take the European
Union … we have trade agreements with them, we’re always
talking to those countries about how we can bring down
barriers and make it easier for exporters on both sides to
trade with each other. This is just a continuation of
that.”
Asked if he had spoken with the Prime
Minister’s Office regarding the matter, Peters said “No, he
didn’t check it out when he made that speech and made those
phone calls.”
“So I hope that he’ll get my message and
he’ll call me next time.”
‘Premature’ calls – Winston
Peters
On Thursday afternoon, Peters was asked about
the developing tariff hikes, to which he said it was “what
we expected, actually.”
“Everybody was overreacting,
everybody was talking too fast, everybody should have kept
their counsel, kept their patience, and it’s starting to
unfold far less serious than people thought.”
Asked
about Luxon’s idea to get CPTPP countries together with
Europe and building a “trading bloc”, Peters said it was
“all very premature.”
“We’re trying to sort out this
other thing with America and China’s trade war, and we’re
rushing off with solutions – let’s find out what happened
there first.”
He would not comment when asked if he
was consulted by the prime minister before the
speech.
Peters was asked again later if Luxon had
discussed the idea of getting those countries together “to
formulate some sort of joint response to the US action” with
him, to which Peters replied “no.”
When asked if he
would expect to have that discussed given he is the foreign
minister, Peters said he’d taken the stance that “experience
matters.”
“In this case, wait until we see what
emerges with the tariff war that’s going on.”
He said
it will come to a resolution, “much quicker than people
think.”
“So let’s not panic here.”
When asked
what was wrong with the idea of engaging with other leaders
regarding the CPTPP, Peters asked “what would you talk
about?”
“What’s the tariff regime going to be in the
end? Do we know what that’s going to be? No. If we don’t
know what that’s going to be, what would you actually talk
about? Think about it.”
When asked if it was naivety
from the prime minister, Peters suggested that question be
put to Luxon.
Luxon dodges Peters’ ‘premature’
comments
On Friday, ahead of Peters’ interview in
Tonga, Luxon took questions from the media in
Hamilton.
He was asked by RNZ what he made of Peters
describing his calls with world leaders being
“premature”.
Luxon disputed the characterisation of
what he was being asked, and moved on.
“I gave a
pretty broad ranging speech yesterday on trade, which was
appropriate given the week we’ve been
experiencing.”
Luxon said he was doing three things
“over the course of yesterday.”
Firstly was to reach
out to “key bilateral partners for New Zealand to say, what
more could we be doing together in a world where we have a
like-minded approach to trade?”
Secondly, he said, was
to understand “how they’ve been interpreting the events of
the last week, and what that means for them and their
economies.”
Thirdly, “making the case that we should
be reaffirming the principles of free trade together,”
whether that was in an ASEAN bloc, or CPTPP
bloc.
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