{"id":381860,"date":"2025-08-29T06:06:31","date_gmt":"2025-08-29T06:06:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/381860\/"},"modified":"2025-08-29T06:06:31","modified_gmt":"2025-08-29T06:06:31","slug":"exporters-need-certainty-not-see-sawing-tariff-rate-mcclay-tells-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/381860\/","title":{"rendered":"Exporters need ‘certainty’, not ‘see-sawing’ tariff rate, McClay tells US"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"National<\/p>\n

\nTrade Minister Todd McClay visited Washington last week.
\nPhoto: RNZ \/\/ Angus Dreaver\n<\/p>\n

Trade Minister Todd McClay says he’s prioritising certainty on the US tariffs before trying to negotiate a reduction.<\/p>\n

He met with senior officials in Washington last week to express his concerns about the 15 percent tariffs imposed on New Zealand exports<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has said there’s no suggestion that US President Donald Trump will budge<\/a> on the tariffs on New Zealand exports.<\/p>\n

McClay told Morning Report he wasn’t expecting to get the tariff rate off as the President had made it clear that any country with a surplus – albeit modest – would be subject to a 15 percent tariff, or higher.<\/p>\n

He said currently, it was the fluctuating nature of the rate which was more harmful to exporters than the rate itself.<\/p>\n

“The challenge we have is, it’s gone to 15 percent, will it go down to 10 percent? Could it go back to 15 percent again?<\/p>\n

“We’ve asked for some certainty of whether there’s a process or not and how we can work with them to get a bit more of that, so at the very least our exporters know what they’re getting into and if they want to put more effort into the US.”<\/p>\n

McClay said the plan to purchase five MH-60R Seahawk helicopters and two Airbus A321XLR aircraft<\/a> from the United States was announced while he was in Washington.<\/p>\n

He said he pointed that out, while making the case that trade between the countries was “actually very balanced”.<\/p>\n

For six of the past 10 years, the US has had a “significant trade surplus against us, in the last four we’ve had a very modest one,” he said.<\/p>\n

“So, that’s registered … the message was, ‘You’re [New Zealand] not in our sights, but we’re sorry you’re a bit of collateral damage here’.”<\/p>\n

McClay said he’ll continue to meet with his US counterparts over the coming months to discuss how those trade flows could impact the rate.<\/p>\n

The tariffs were unavoidable and most of the world was trying to negotiate with the US.<\/p>\n

He made it clear that most of the tariff was being passed on and that it was “inflationary for US consumers, but it’s starting to bite”.<\/p>\n

“Any further movement is going to harm trade significantly, and then secondly the see-sawing” was harmful to New Zealand exporters.<\/p>\n

McClay said most countries had responded to the uncertainty with US trade, by making efforts to reduce trade barriers elsewhere and give certainty to exporters.<\/p>\n

“I haven’t seen any evidence yet of others saying, ‘We’ll retaliate against everybody and put tariff rates up’.<\/p>\n

“In our engagement with countries we trade with, or want to trade more with, … the conversations are more positive than they were previously.”<\/p>\n

Sign up for Ng\u0101 Pitopito K\u014drero<\/a>, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Trade Minister Todd McClay visited Washington last week. Photo: RNZ \/\/ Angus Dreaver Trade Minister Todd McClay says…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":381861,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5311],"tags":[1816,9409,12,196,10975,10973,10974,49,978,659],"class_list":{"0":"post-381860","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-audio","9":"tag-current-affairs","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-podcasts","12":"tag-public-radio","13":"tag-radio-new-zealand","14":"tag-rnz","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-us","17":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115110555906450044","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381860","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=381860"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381860\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/381861"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=381860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=381860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=381860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}