New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said on Wednesday the United States should return to a regional trade pact it quit in 2017 if it wanted to engage economically with the Indo-Pacific region.
Speaking on a visit to Washington, Ardern said that multinational agreement, now known as the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), was the "gold standard," but New Zealand would continue to push for greater access to the U.S. market even without it.
