A recent piece in Rural News focused upon the devastating impact of NTBs to the meat industry, showing the pathway towards reducing these Anti-Competitive Market Distortions.
Sir Lockwood Smith, former NZ Ag Minister, went further to indicate how the the US was similarly focused on NTBs in their trade negotiations.
“What appears to have angered Trump and his team so much are what’s called anti-competitive market distortions,” he told Rural News.
“This is about a government providing financial support and incentives or subsjdies to its manufacturers or farmers, which enables them to produce goods cheaply, and giving their exporters what is seen as an unfair competitive advantage. China has been a major player in this regard,” he says.
Smith says research has shown that such actions behind the border can have up to three times greater negative impact on economic wellbeing and wealth creation than tariffs themselves. He says the crazy thing about some of these behind the border market distortions are that they can damage the economies of both parties.
He says there is now an attempt to persuade the USA to focus more on dealing with the distortions that have damaged US interests over the years rather than just using blanket tariffs.