NZ’s free-market playbook as useful as a floppy disk

The useful part

Supplied New Zealand needs to promote new industries if it's to compete on the world stage, according to an Oxford University expert on the global economy. With global economic giants, including the United States and China, strongly backing various sectors, the free trade market is becoming a dated concept. The idea of industrial policy is still viewed as a communist concept in many parts of the New Zealand political and business sector, which remember the days of Robert Muldoon's Think Big projects in the early 1980s.

How it works

• Our current way of stepping back and letting the market do its work doesn't make sense in a world where China and the US are pursuing industrial policies to support national champions.
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• "They're thinking about within which economic alliance is that nested, and how is that going to affect our resilience in a much more geopolitical world?" That's a big change in mindset for us, she says, but...
• "You can't prepare yourself to be the best rugby team in the world and then discover the competition is actually ballet," says Woods, a New Zealander and graduate of the University of Auckland who has lived...

What to take from it

"We've come through 35 years of believing that the government should really just be this sort of cocktail party hostess, ushering different businesses and market players," she tells The Detail. A decade ago, Beijing laid out a 'Made in China 2025' strategy that led it to become a global leader in solar panels and electric cars. Meanwhile, the US – under both the Biden and latest Trump administrations – has put export controls on advanced computer chips to stop other countries (mainly China) catching up with the United States.

Example or evidence

• "We were all brought up with a mindset which was to think that we were playing in a rules-based order.
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Details worth keeping

NZ's free-market playbook as useful as a floppy disk. Asian countries diversify, NZ racks up new partnerships But that view is now about as useful as a floppy disk, says Ngaire Woods, professor of global economic governance at Oxford University, and founding dean of Oxford's Blavatnik School of Government. China and the United States are not supporting open markets.

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