Tag Archives: exports

Trade, trade agreements like the TPPA and the role of trade

Posted on by
Reply

Trade has played a major part in our country’s economy for centuries. What we can’t grow or make in this country can be imported and what we can produce here can be exported.

The growth of international trade has been enabled by cheap oil, cheap transport, including shipping and air freight costs. Last year New Zealand spent over $7 billion importing oil, up 22% on the previous year. Our balance of payments or the difference between what we earn from our exports and what we pay for our imports is a matter of great concern.

If we could replace at least some of our imports with goods manufactured in New Zealand it would greatly improve our balance of payments situation. Facing the reality that we have reached the end of cheap easy to extract oil and that life after peak oil is actually going to be more localised, we must plan policies to match.

The Trans Pacific Partership Agreement (TPPA) The best description of this deal being secretly negotiated is at http://itsourfuture.org.nz. Do read this carefully. Jane Kelsey, editor of No Ordinary Deal – unmasking the Trans-Pacific Partnership Free Trade Agreement is a leading world authority on it. Watch for her talking in your town. Round 15 is to be negotiated in Auckland New Zealand in early December. Who knows, this may be the last round and it may be signed. So let’s get working to oppose it in whatever way we can. The New Economics Party will be working over the next few weeks, that is for sure. Will you join us?

Local Currencies would also lower exchange rate

Posted on by
1

Local Currencies would also lower Exchange Rate, says New Economics Party

Media Statement                            23 April, 2012

If Government allowed local authorities to issue interest-free currencies, the New Zealand dollar would drop and jobs would be created, according to Deirdre Kent, a spokesperson for the New Economics Party.

She was responding to the Green Party’s call for the government to print money to lower the exchange rate. “While we applaud the Greens for addressing the elephant in the room, (our sovereign right to create our own money), doing it the way we suggest will also reduce unemployment and add to investment in green business. If centralised monopoly money is created, the experiences in US and Europe have been that the new money just stays in  banks.”

“The New Economics Party would amend the Reserve Bank Act to allow for local authorities to issue currencies, designed with a circulation incentive, she said. Only then would there be  new liquidity for business investment. The new money would move fast to counter the sluggish economy.”

“We are in a period of extreme risk of global financial contagion and New Zealand is a very import dependent country. So let’s think outside the box and stop being so hidebound by imposing a monopoly currency,” she said. “The  way to thrive is to create our own currencies at local authority level. Then we will truly have import substitution as businesses work to find ways of replacing expensive imports with something they can manufacture themselves. The natural clothing industry would boom, as would the part of the home building and insulation industry that uses local materials.  As soon as we get genuine import replacement the current account deficit falls and there is no longer such pressure to import capital. Then the dollar drops.”

The solutions to New Zealand’s economic problems are not by importing or printing more money, but by creating different currencies to circulate smoothly at a local level, she said.  They could be monitored to avoid overprinting.