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Source: ONE News -
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United States senators are against a free trade agreement with New Zealand saying the country's dairy industry has "anti-competitive practices".
The Dominion Post reports that a letter signed by 30 senators was sent to US Trade Representative Ron Kirk.
Talks started last week in Melbourne on a Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) which would build on the previously negotiated P4 trade agreement between New Zealand, Brunei, Chile and Singapore to include the US, Australia, Peru and Vietnam.
Idaho senators Mike Crapo and Jim Risch led 28 other US senators, including former Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry, in urging "very careful attention to dairy trade concerns" in the letter.
"Because of the anti-competitive practices in New Zealand's dairy industry and the extensive degree of control it wields over world dairy markets to the detriment of the US dairy industry, we are deeply concerned that an expansion of US-New Zealand dairy trade would further open the US to these imports," the senators wrote.
Losses to US dairy producers may total up to $US20 billion ($NZ28 billion) during the first decade of the agreement if restrictions were fully phased out in the partnership, they said.
Trade Minister Tim Groser says the senators are influential.
"It's a real concern. We should make no mistake about it - this is a very powerful lobby we're taking on."
Prime Minister John Key will lead lobbying in Washington.
Groser says it is "palpable nonsense" to say that Fonterra has created an unfair market.
Though it dominates the domestic market, it has to compete like every other company internationally, he says.
The US subsidises dairy producers but New Zealand does not.
"It's a very, very politicised argument, trying to suggest that somehow New Zealand doesn't play it fair, when any person who looked at it objectively would reach exactly the opposite conclusion. New Zealand has enemies on dairy trade around the world and always has had."
The next round of TPP talks is in Los Angeles in June.
