Pacific Trade Deal

Papua New Guinea and Fij have refused to join the Australia and New Zealand-led agreement, which has been signed by most other Pacific nations.

Wadan Narsey, a Fijian economist at Australia's Swinburne University, said the absence of Fiji and PNG was a setback but he said there were still advantages.

He said the first of these was that something was better than nothing.

The full text of the proposed deal has been made available online only a few weeks out from the planned signing ceremony to be held in Tonga on the 14th of this month.

A trade justice campaigner for the Pacific Network on Globalisation, Adam Wolfenden, said there was simply not enough time for an independent assessment of the proposed agreement.

Mr Wolfenden said the extremely complex legal document would have a massive impact on a cross section of society in the Pacific.

“New Zealand and Australia are being accused of pushing a trade deal to advance their own commercial interests at the expense of Pacific Islands’ national interests,” Green Party trade spokesperson Barry Coates said.
 
“The fact that the Pacific’s two biggest economies, Fiji and Papua New Guinea, have opted out is a warning sign that Australia and New Zealand have demanded too many concessions. Their absence from PACER Plus will undermine the existing Pacific Island Countries Trade Agreement (PICTA) and Pacific regionalism.
 

Representatives from the 12 countries that formed the TPP, plus China and South Korea, will meet for the first time since US President Donald Trump pulled the United States out of the TPP in January, effectively killing the accord in its current form.

The Chile meeting is a sign efforts to find an alternative Asia-Pacific trade pact are moving ahead, with China now likely leading the talks after the US dropped out.