The free trade agreement (FTA) signed between New Zealand and the United Kingdom this week demonstrates the intransigence of political leaders and their official advisers in the face of concerted demands to rethink the country’s trade policy paradigm.
Those demands reached a high point with the deeply unpopular Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), which was rescued from the even more unpopular Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) after the US had quit.
