Globalization by Stealth
The proposed New Zealand-Hong Kong
Free Trade Agreement and Investment
An ARENA paper written by
Bill Rosenberg
This is a very big document - so big, in fact, we've broken it up into bits. If you’d like to access the full version all at once, in a PDF version, please go to the CAFCA Website at: http://canterbury.cyberplace.org.nz/community/CAFCA/publications/Trade/GlobalisationByStealth.pdf
The current investment situation
Hong Kong’s investment policies
The Nature of Hong Kong's Invstment in NZ
- Primary industry -- farming, fishing, forestry, mining
- Secondary industry
- Tertiary industry: Services
Implications of a Hong Kong FTIA
Singapore - New Zealand agreement
Preface
From Seattle, to Prague, to Chiang Mai, to Okinawa, to Melbourne the protests against globalization have sent a clear and potent message: people are no longer prepared to sit back and see the interests of the very rich and powerful dictate the most basic decisions that affect their lives. As a result the World Trade Organization and APEC both appear paralyzed, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund face an ongoing crisis of legitimacy, and the corporate elite and global financiers are constantly under siege.
The response has been a multi-pronged strategy to reinvigorate globalization by stealth. Behind the scenes at the WTO negotiations are underway to extend the potentially most far-reaching of its agreements, the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). Major battles on public services, environment, health, education, culture and broadcasting, are brewing as people mobilize and governments come under pressure around the world. Other discussions are taking place on extending the intellectual property rights agreement to the patenting of life forms and opposition is mounting to attempts by the pharmaceutical giants to defend the monopoly guaranteed by WTO agreements and deny poorer countries the right to copy lifesaving drugs.
At the same time, regional and bilateral agreements are seeking to stitch together from below what is no longer so easy to achieve on a global scale. Negotiations are beginning to extend the North American Free Trade Agreement from Canada, the US and Mexico to encompass a Free Trade Area of the Americas, covering 34 countries. Already a series of hugely controversial disputes brought by investors has seen regulations protecting health, safety, public services and the environment held in breach of NAFTA, resulting in massive compensation awards and the withdrawal of sound social and environmental policies. The consequences of that Agreement being extended over the whole American continent are inconceivable.
Among APEC countries a rash of negotiations has broken out in an attempt to revitalize its goal of a free trade and investment by 2010 for its richer members and 2020 for its poorer ones. The new Labour Alliance Coalition has taken the lead in this process, indicating that the evangelical commitment to free trade and investment policies of recent decades remains unchanged.
Last year a radical free trade and investment agreement with Singapore, described by its architect as a Trojan Horse for bigger deals, was negotiated with customary secrecy. A cosmetic consultation process was designed to deflect growing demands for meaningful democratic participation in the treaty-making process. An equally pointless select committee process and parliamentary vote took place, given that Cabinet retained the sole right to determine the content and endorsement of the deal. The Government is currently negotiating a similar Agreement with Hong Kong. This will build on the Singapore deal, and on an Investment Promotion agreement with Hong Kong that was signed back in 1995 about which people know very little. Yet that agreement already replicates many of the most offensive elements of the defeated Multilateral Agreement on Investment, which was itself based on the NAFTA investment rules mentioned above.
Working on the basis that ‘forewarned is forearmed’ ARENA is committed to building a campaign of opposition to this strategy of globalization by stealth, whether in bilateral and regional agreements or at the WTO. As with the MAI campaign, we believe that a combination of Maori, unions, the elderly, local councils, farmers, small businesses, students, local communities and many others who are paying the price of globalization every day can force the Government to change tack.
The benefit of the Singapore Free Trade and Investment Agreement is that we now have the model for what comes next. There are also many lessons to learn from what is happening with similar deals around the world. Dr Bill Rosenberg, in his incomparable and meticulous way, has drawn together that evidence and prepared a comprehensive account of the implications of the proposed Agreement with Hong Kong. It provides a compelling case against that Agreement, and others of its ilk, and potent ammunition on which to build a campaign. We hereby challenge both parties in Government to impose a moratorium on all its current negotiations and respond, in detail, to this evidence as part of a full, public, participatory and open debate.
Dr Jane Kelsey