Obama warms to free trade with NZ

Barack Obama is sympathetic to free trade with New Zealand, Prime Minister John Key said yesterday after a 15-minute telephone call with the United States President.

Mr Key took the pre-arranged call yesterday morning while he was visiting the Starship hospital in Auckland.

"I raised with him the issues of free trade and pointed out to him that it was very important to New Zealand," Mr Key said. "He seemed sympathetic to that, I thought, and made it clear it was something that was on the agenda for us ..."

The new Obama Administration has yet to decide whether it will continue with talks in the Trans Pacific Partnership - a trade deal that began with New Zealand and Singapore, then Brunei and Chile.

The United States, Australia, Peru, and Vietnam said last year they wanted to join.

Mr Key said they also talked about the economy, nuclear proliferation and Afghanistan. Mr Obama thanked New Zealand for its contribution of a provincial reconstruction team in Bamyan.

The United States has formally asked New Zealand to increase its contribution to Afghanistan but any decision on that will not be made until a review of the Afghanistan deployment is completed in August.

Mr Key said Mr Obama had said that the United States and New Zealand had a very strong relationship "and he wanted that relationship to be even better".

He had begun the conversation calling him "Mr Prime Minister" and at the end of the conversation he had said "call me Barack".

"He told me he had friends who own a house here and would like come here and play golf one day. "

Mr Key, who has a house in Hawaii where Mr Obama grew up, said in response to a question: "If he wants to come and stay he'd be more than welcome."

Meanwhile, Trade Minister Tim Groser said in a speech to the United States Chamber of Commerce yesterday that he agreed with his US counterpart Ron Kirk, who recently said that there had to be a new paradigm on trade.

In a reference to the Trans Pacific Partnership, Mr Groser also said: "We are very comfortable waiting until the Administration completes its review and makes its decision."

He strongly hoped it would join the partnership.

"With this group of countries we have an opportunity to set some new benchmarks in terms of structure and quality," he said.

"It is certainly time for us to start untangling what has been called by trade policy theorists 'the noodles in the spaghetti bowl' caused by so many bilateral free trade agreements and start putting in place a regional trade regime that offers business friendly rules and lower overheads."

- JACQUELINE SMITH