PM meets with world trade boss
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has promised the head of the world’s largest economic organisation New Zealand will do all it can to ensure it has ‘‘the strongest possible system’’ as the pair met at the start of a two-day trip.
World Trade Organisation (WTO) director-general Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala met with Ardern yesterday and will meet with other senior ministers today.
Speaking ahead of the meeting, Ardern promised New Zealand’s support for the organisation.
‘‘I just want to reinforce the importance we place on your roles and the institution, and that we are very supportive of the work you are doing and, if I were to highlight just two areas where you can always count on us for advocacy, it’ll be around subsidies for fossil fuels and fisheries,’’ she said.
Okonjo-Iweala has come to New Zealand after visiting Australia, where she encouraged prime minister Anthony Albanese to diversify its trade exports, even as its frosty relationship with its main trading partner – China – begins to thaw.
She said New Zealand had been ‘‘so instrumental at the WTO in so many ways’’ and said officials here and in Australia had helped ‘‘to bring around’’ Pacific Island nations who were upset over the agreement for fishery subsidies.
Professor Robert Patman, a specialist in International Relations at the University of Otago, said her visit was ‘‘very important’’ because the WTO helped New Zealand, a small, export-dependent nation, win trade disputes against more powerful countries.