Bernard Hickey: We lost some, but gained more

Dairy, foreign ownership and copyright law were the focus of nitpicking over the TPP deal. Photo / Gerald Ford

The growing opposition in recent months to the Trans-Pacific Partnership here and overseas has surprised a few people.

The less-than-grateful response to the deal shocked those who worked for a couple of decades to secure a trade deal with two of our biggest trading partners - Japan and the United States.

The contrast with the response to New Zealand's trade agreement with China in 2008 could not be more stark. That deal was judged, rightly, a huge win for New Zealand diplomacy that would open up an enormous new market. It set the stage for merchandise exports to China to rise from $1.6 billion in 2008 to $11.6b last year.

Without it, New Zealand's recovery from the Global Financial Crisis might have looked very different, although it's worth noting that Australia's exports to China rose by even more over the same period and it did not have a deal.

This TPP deal, which on the face of it delivers more than than twice as many tariff reductions as the China deal, has sparked so much opposition that tens of thousands marched against it before it was agreed.

The first response by many this week was to focus on the disappointing deal for dairy, to criticise the permanent block on a ban on foreign buying of property and to highlight the extra costs of longer copyright protections for drugs, books, movies and music.

A trade deal done with America and Japan a decade ago would have sparked a national celebration. This time all we got was a collective bout of nitpicking and fossicking through the entrails. Even Trade Minister Tim Groser, the TPP's biggest cheerleader, talked about how New Zealand would have to swallow a few "dead rats" to get a deal.

So what has changed? First, this was far from the "free" trade deal of olden days where tariffs on commodities were reduced over time and a whole range of restrictions on investment and freedom of movement for people were removed.

The TPP was much more about winning a few tariff reductions - and remember Canada and the US will still have painfully high barriers to entry for our dairy after this deal - in exchange for a US-led drive to strengthen intellectual property protections for America's music and movie studios and its drug companies.

It was also mostly about the US "pivoting" its strategic focus towards Asia in the face of China's rise. The inclusion of Japan and the exclusion of China was the main game.

President Barack Obama gave the clearest indication about the TPP's role in the world when he said: "When more than 95 per cent of our potential customers live outside our borders, we can't let countries like China write the rules of the global economy. We should write those rules."

Luckily for us, the US companies driving the TPP's "rule writing" didn't get most of what they wanted. The TPP even includes a clause allowing countries to keep cracking down on tobacco use without being sued and the drug companies got far less than the 12 years of patent protection they wanted.

But the biggest difference between now and 2008 was the GFC and the destruction of the consensus about a 30-year drive towards free trade.

Proponents of the TPP have to do a lot to convince a sceptical public of its benefits.

It may be best to paint the TPP as another diplomatic agreement that was more about politics than trade in goods and services.