When Trump was elected last year I promised myself that I wouldn’t concentrate on international politics that much this time around. While yes, I am no longer on Twitter or TikTok any more and barely on Facebook, it’s hard to ignore the collapse of a superpower into authoritarianism. It’s the kind of thing that invites comment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My boycott is going well. I don’t miss Amazon, Adobe is slated to end next month and I don’t subscribe to Amazon Prime any more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For New Zealand I think the rubber is going to meet the road on 2 April (3 April our time). Trump is calling it “Liberation Day”. That’s when the Trump administration is announcing global tariffs on a country-by-country basis<\/a>. Even in the absence of a free trade agreement, the United States is our second largest export partner<\/a>. A smidge ahead of Australia and a fair way behind China.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The risk is severe enough that in February Minter Ellison Rudd Watts outlined steps NZ exporters should take<\/a> and Winston Peters returns from a diplomatic mission<\/a> to the United States today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Tariffs there will hurt us. And I don’t know whether Luxon and the rest of the government have the mettle to retaliate in a reciprocal manner should they be applied. Trump considers value added taxes like GST as a form of tariff<\/a> and I fear his administration will act to that effect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I guess we’ll find out in two weeks. But I think we need to brace ourselves for our exports to take a hit. At least we won’t be alone in it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When Trump was elected last year I promised myself that I wouldn’t concentrate on international politics that much this time around. While yes, I am no longer on Twitter or TikTok any more and barely on Facebook, it’s hard to ignore the collapse of a superpower into authoritarianism. It’s the kind of thing that invites … Continue reading “Liberation Day”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/petesi.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/petesi.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/petesi.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/petesi.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/petesi.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/petesi.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":160,"href":"https:\/\/petesi.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135\/revisions\/160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/petesi.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/petesi.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/petesi.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}