20 June 2014

Key doing deal with US that benefits Wall Street

John Key needs to tell the public why New Zealand is currently involved in a trade deal to benefit Wall Street at the expense of Queen Street, Green Party Co-leader Dr Russel Norman said today.

The text of a 19-page, international trade agreement involving New Zealand has just been published via WikiLeaks. According to the United States Chamber of Commerce, the Trade in Service Agreement (TISA) ‘should expand access to foreign markets for United States service industries and ensure they receive national and most-favoured nation treatment’.

“The United States is pushing to limit regulation of financial services,” said Dr Norman.

“The Trade in Services Agreement (TISA) is a deal aimed at locking the sort of policies that caused the Global Financial Crisis in the first place.

“The United States also want to freeze financial regulation at existing levels, which would severely limit the ability of sovereign governments to deal with another global financial crisis.

“The New Zealand public has been kept completely in the dark about this agreement,” said Dr Norman.

“All the New Zealand public has been told about this deal is a few paragraphs on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s website that promotes all the potential upsides of this deal while failing to point out the downsides.

“For a major world-wide financial services agreement that could restrict the ability of a future New Zealand government to regulate this is simply not good enough.

“John Key has the perfect opportunity with his upcoming meeting with President Obama to tell the New Zealand public just why we have been negotiating this agreement in secret.

“Mr Key and his officials also need to clearly spell out the potential downsides of this agreement for the New Zealand public.”

Link to the Wikileaks page on TISA:

https://wikileaks.org/tisa-financial/WikiLeaks-secret-tisa-financial-annex.pdf

© Scoop Media