Fair and sustainable trade is critical to the wellbeing of Aotearoa.
The Green Party supports trade that is fair, protects human and workers’ rights, is environmentally sustainable, and honours te Tiriti o Waitangi.
But international trade rules are broken. Recent trade agreements have protected the profits of foreign corporates by signing away Aotearoa’s right to regulate in our public best interest. Agreements have neglected the environment, allowed breaches of our privacy rights, encouraged foreign investment that does not benefit Aotearoa, and allowed other countries to use exploitative labour practices to undercut sustainable and fair competition.
While some political parties wavered, the Green Party is the only party in Parliament to remain steadfastly opposed to the TPPA because of the risks it presents to Aotearoa’s sovereignty.
In light of COVID-19, we have a unique opportunity to reduce Aotearoa’s reliance on imported goods while improving the quality of the trade we do conduct. We want to see trade
live up to its potential to enrich the lives of people across the world, alleviating inequality instead of creating and entrenching it.
The Green Party will:
- Continue to champion a new way of doing trade, including completing the Agreement on Climate Change, Trade, and Sustainability with world-leading environmental commitments, and seek to bring other countries into the agreement as quickly as possible.
- Review Aotearoa’s existing trade agreements to remove the controversial Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) provisions and government procurement limitations, lower investment screening thresholds, and strengthen environmental and labour rights provisions.
- Seek to align all trade agreements Aotearoa signs with the Paris Agreement’s climate change commitments.
- Strengthen the democratic process around signing trade agreements, with the creation of a Parliamentary Committee for Treaties, an independent Parliamentary Commissioner for Trade, and ensuring any decision to sign an agreement requires a vote in Parliament.
- Improve scrutiny of trade agreements, with the public release of final texts before signing and independent National Interest Analyses.
- Support our Pāsefika neighbours to increase the value of their exports.