Kiwi News and Views

A major American study suggests they are not?

This column is about the white working class. In the US 2024 elections they mainly voted for Donald Trump. Had they voted with the white middle class, Trump would have lost the election with only 42 percent of voters instead of the 50 percent he actually won. (Because so many potential voters he only won 32 percent of all, Kamala Harris 31 percent and non-voter 67 percent.) The equivalent class may also be important in many other Western democracies including New Zealand.

I am going to analyse it by reporting on a remarkable study, Deaths of Disease, by two Princeton University economists, Anne Case and her husband Angus Deaton. (Deaton was the 2015 Nobel laureate in economics ‘for his analysis of consumption, poverty, and welfare’; his 2023 Economics in America: An Immigrant Economist Explores the Land of Inequality deserves a review in its own right.)

The study started off as a curiosity question when the two wondered why the suicide rate in the Montana county in which they were holidaying in 2014 was four times that of the New Jersey county which was their main home. Fortunately, they could pursue their question without having to get funding so they published their conclusions just a year later; had they gone through New Zealand’s clumsy research-funding system they would have still been waiting for permission.

Curiosity research often gets the researcher nowhere, but it can open up unexpected insights. Thus it was with this question.

Earlier I described the study in class terms. Official death certificates don’t record an individual’s social class. But American ones record their educational attainment. Case and Deaton divide the white non-Hispanics into those with a four-year college degree and those without, which is a not unreasonable proxy for class, and focus on the mid-life 45-to-54-year-olds. The white non-Hispanic working class made up about 38 percent of US voters, more than the corresponding middle class with college degrees (33 percent) or the others (29 percent) – mainly Blacks and Hispanics.

Initially the researchers’ concern was suicide but they broadened their study to include deaths from drug overdoses and suicides – the ‘deaths of despair’ – and pursued many other health and lifestyle measures to understand what was going on. Their repeated finding is that while the indicators for the White working class are worse than those for the White middle class, as one might expect, the working class indicators are deteriorating over time, whereas the middle class ones are stable or improving. This is particularly true for the deaths of despair, which almost trebled between 1995 and 2018 for the White working class but were stable for its middle class.

The effect is so strong that since 2000 US White non-Hispanic men and women (of both classes) in mid-life have experienced continual increases in mortality and morbidity, while US Blacks and US Hispanics, as well as all subgroups of populations in other affluent countries, show the opposite trend.

The researchers consider why. It turns out that White working class (age-adjusted) life satisfaction is also falling while that of the corresponding middle class is stable. (That for Blacks is rising – although as a rule the Black indicators are worse in level terms). So are their median earnings while those for the white non-Hispanic middle class are rising.

After a careful review of the available evidence, Case and Deaton do not attribute the deaths of despair to poverty, falling real incomes or increasing inequality. (This is especially surprising given Deaton’s expertise in poverty as the Nobel citation indicates; Case’s is in health and labour economics. I should not be surprised if Deaton is sceptical about those who cite rising inequality as the cause of everything going wrong but don’t understand the measure and provide no causal evidence.) They cite other groups, such as US Blacks, whose economic and health indicators are worse than for whites and yet they are showing gains.

Instead Case and Deaton argue that the ultimate cause is people’s sense that life is meaningless, unsatisfying or not fulfilling, and it lacks the basic economic security that makes these higher order feelings more likely. In particular, they suggest that working conditions for these people have deteriorated, citing technological change, globalisation and weakening unions.

I was reminded of a study of the determinants of why ex-prisoners lapsed back into crime. It was not only those that were unemployed but also those who had poor-quality jobs. Those with good-quality jobs with rich networks of workmates were much less likely to return to crime.

The research was first reported before Trump was on the serious political horizon and did not have had him or political voting particularly in mind. Yet, as the opening paragraph points out, it sheds some light on Trump’s support. It is an odd reversal that today the Democrats support clusters around the well-off and the Republicans seem to represent the working class (although the cautious might distinguish Trump from traditional Republicans).

It seems likely that the White non-Hispanic working class are consciously rejecting the Democrats, perhaps partly because the party is still dominant for other racial groups but also because the Democrats are so dominated by middle-class values and perceptions that they are not addressing the concerns of the depressed working class.

I am struck by how many diagnoses of the Democrats’s failure are supercilious about the working class – along the lines that the poor fools are persuaded by populism. Well yes, but the populist politicians are seemingly addressing their concerns, while the supercilious ignore them. That is not to say that the populist policies will effectively meet working class needs if they are applied. But at least it thinks it is being listened to.

Trump’s assault on the independence of US universities is an example. In my view the attack is politically motivated, aiming to undermine liberal democracy (also with long-term repercussions on US economic growth). But the white working class might well ask ‘what has Harvard ever done for me other than ignore my needs?’ (That is not quite true, but there is the ring of truth.)

Dos this American situation apply elsewhere? It is generally accepted that there is rising populism throughout the world and one can at least conjecture its success arises from its seeming to address the concerns of the marginalised, which are neglected by the elite. If you look at its account of democracy – which might be judged self-centred and self-satisfied – one might conclude that a benevolent dictator is attractive (although it is rare for dictators to remain benevolent – Pope Francis may be the exception). I was struck that many Brexit voters seemed to be saying ‘up you’ to the British elite, especially the London-based financial sector.

Does the situation apply to Aotearoa New Zealand? Talking about social class here is a bit like talking about sex in Victorian times. One doesn’t, even though it is a powerful driver of life. I am struck, for instance, how discussions on Māori socioeconomic status are really about a Māori working class, ignoring that there is a thriving Māori middle class, and that much of the analysis applies to the non-Māori working class. (This is not to ignore that there are particular Māori issues, just as the US has extraordinary challenges from its past – and consequently current – treatment of its First Peoples and Blacks.)

I suspect the politics of the working class is muted in New Zealand by MMP, with a number of parties vying for the populist vote. I leave you to judge to what extent the Labour Party is neglecting the working class but note that it still seems more dependent upon unions than the US Democrats. I cannot help wondering whether the success of gangs is because they give some meaning, life satisfaction and fulfilment to their members. I observe that international success, such as in sport, gives even the marginal a temporary meaning to their lives.

Case and Deaton think that there are no quick fixes to the sad state of the White working class. It is the result of decades of disadvantages; solving it will require patience and perseverance. True here (true for Māori). But we can do better, by paying attention to their needs.

There is an irony in Trump’s strategy. He pays attention to the working class in the way that the Democrats do not. And he thinks he is addressing their concerns by promising jobs in a manufacturing sector extended by border protection (although even if he succeeds, he overlooks that the majority of jobs and job growth in a modern affluent economy are in the service sector). Presumably, his hope – as foreshadowed by Orban in Hungary – is to use his successes to embed a hegemonic dictatorship.

Populism is a shallow philosophy but it works – temporarily anyway – at the ballot box. We threaten the viability of liberal democracy if we do not respond more creatively than currently.

The budget runup is far from easy.

Budget 2025 day is Thursday 22 May. About a month earlier in a normal year, the macroeconomic forecasts would be completed (the fiscal ones would still be tidying up) and the main policy decisions would have been made (but there would still be a lot of policy detail to be worked on).

This is not a normal year as Donald Trump zigzags from policy to policy. One shant be surprised if the macroeconomic forecasts are under major review right up to the time they go to press and, despite Prime Minister Christopher Luxon spending a lot of time overseas, there may yet have to be a major policy redirection. Expect the debt track to be modified even if the debt level will remain the government obsession.

For this is the most volatile budget buildup time that I can recall, as Trump’s volatility impacts on the entire international economy and financial system. For this is the most volatile budget buildup time that I can recall, as Trump’s weaving impacts on the entire international economy and financial system.

It is not just that it is already difficult to know the timing of the impact of the announced tariff increases, but Trump is promising more (or perhaps he isn’t). His (unpredictable) decisions will affect the latter part of 2025, which will impact on exchange rate and interest rates. If one knew for certain, one could make a tidy killing in the financial markets – I remain poor. Additionally, there is the impact of the tariff changes on exports and imports. Even international services seem to be affected.

Much of what is happening is captured in the notion of an international trade war. Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters objects to the term; I think he is concerned that it may result in panicked attitudes, responses and policies. However, for the cool-headed analyst there are useful lessons from traditional warfare.

Warfare involves sacrifices. Fortunately, trade wars do not involve the loss of lives (directly) but they do involve the economic losses from reductions in output – even Trump acknowledges that (but he promises that won’t apply to the US in the long run – don’t bet on how long it will be).

Warfare outcomes are contingent. The British won the Battle of Waterloo against the French because the Prussians arrived in time. The Duke of Wellington said that ‘It had been a damned nice thing – the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life.’

There are retaliation decisions being made now by all sides which will alter the course of the trade war. We will know the good ones at the end. But the decisions – good and bad – are being made now.

Wellington also said, ‘My heart is broken by the terrible loss I have sustained in my old friends and companions and my poor soldiers. Believe me, nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won.’

Yes, there may be victors, but no one wins a war except in the sense that the other side is defeated (which seems to be the Trump objective – cost irrelevant).

(A further generalisation is that wars accelerate technological innovations which flow on to civilian life. An example is how air warfare led to giant leaps in aircraft design; the Ukrainian invasion is likely to generate parallel development in drones. Not sure of that insight’s relevance here but keep it in mind.)

A world war changes the whole world order (as we saw after World War II). The outcome of an international trade war is uncertain. My guess is that the US will play a lesser role in the future – although that is not Trump’s intention. However, China may not play as great a role in the new world order as it hopes. Perhaps the lesson of not allowing anyone to be too dominant has been learned.

New Zealand’s objective has to be a world economic order based on the rule of law, which is more protective of the interests of small countries, in contrast to a world where bullies rule. Our contribution to attaining it is likely to be small, although Prime Minister Luxon is making an effort. He might recall – hardly anyone else does – that towards the end of his time as Prime Minister, Rob Muldoon got very involved in trying to resolve the international debt crisis – with little effect. New Zealand is too small to be significant. A return to a rules-based world economic order may be achievable but New Zealand may have more influence working with other small-economy nations than spending its time schmoozing with the biggies.

Many of the lessons from the warfare parallel belong to a longer-term time horizon and will not be important in framing the budget. Even so, the short-term impact of the trade war on exports, exchange rates, prices, and interest rates will.

Even if they were not, the 2025 budget would have been a challenge. The economy has been weaker than was expected a year ago. That reduces tax revenue and lifts some welfare spending which means that government borrowing is likely to be higher than the government wants. The effort to cut back government spending will continue although some of the big spending ministers – defence, health, housing, transport – are pressing for their portfolios to spend more.

The trade war need not be all bad news. The Chinese rejection of US soybeans may lift its demand for NZ foodstuffs, offsetting our marketing difficulties in the now more protected US markets. Or perhaps it won’t. Unable to export to the US, the Chinese may send us cheaper electric vehicles. But the gain may be offset by a lift in the NZ exchange rate.

International interest rates are expected to rise. As a net borrower internationally, New Zealand will suffer; that includes the fiscal position.

The rates have not been helped by Trump demanding the US Fed reduce them, and threatening to replace the Fed’s chairman. Whether he can or not is almost irrelevant. Financial markets are spooked, with the added complication that while the usual financial refuge during times of uncertainty is US Treasuries (government bonds), this time they are a source of uncertainty.

Whatever you think of our politicians, spare a thought for the Treasury accountants and economists preparing the budget. The technical issues require judgments beyond the call of duty. If I were one of them, I would probably be thinking that a mini-budget towards the end of the year must be an option – it need not be called that, of course – and that the May budget should be framed to give flexibility to cope in an exceptionally volatile world.

Four eighty-year-old books which are still vitally relevant today.

Between 1942 and 1945, four refugees from Vienna each published a ground-breaking – seminal – book.* They left their country after Austria was taken over by fascists in 1934 and by Nazi Germany in 1938. Previously they had lived in ‘Red Vienna’; ruled by Social Democratic Workers’ Party between 1918 and 1934, which had a brilliant record housing the population (but could be intrusive at the personal level). It never won over the countryside; hence the 1934 reversal.

Red Vienna was a world-leading centre of intellectual activity in architecture, economics, music, philosophy, psychology, science and sociology.** Contemporary thinking is still shaped by them. Other outstanding contributions came from Sigmund Freud, Erich Korngold, Marie Jahoda, Paul Lazarsfeld, Arnold Schoenberg, Erwin Schrödinger, and Ludwig Wittgenstein (and many other economists). Alas, it all fell apart with the fascist takeover, which was not only strongly anti-semitic but intolerant of dissent. Those who did not die (including in concentration camps), fled.

Hence the four refugees and the books they published, each of which was influenced by the writer’s personal experience.

Karl Popper’s The Open Society and Its Enemies was actually written in New Zealand. At the core of his thesis is that a totalitarian society led by people who have preconceived theories is unable to adapt to change. Implicitly, he is celebrating Red Vienna, which was an open society, and criticising what came after. His totalitarian societies are on the left as well as the right. The book juxtaposes Plato (i.e. Hitler) with Hegel (Stalin). If he were alive today, Popper might cite many current instances.

Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom is not unrelated – he suffered from the rise of Austrian fascism too, although he was not a Jew – arguing that the abandonment of individualism and classical liberalism inevitably leads to a loss of freedom, the creation of an oppressive society, the tyranny of a dictator, and the serfdom of the individual. He especially condemned central planning which was popular not only in Stalin’s Russian but throughout the West. I doubt that anybody today supports the kind of central planning he was railing against but the theme of the dangers of empowering the state over the individual remains relevant.

Margaret Thatcher famously wrote: ‘the most powerful critique of socialist planning and the socialist state which I read at this time and to which I have returned so often since [is] The Road to Serfdom’. More moderate thinkers also found it valuable. Keynes wrote that ‘Morally and philosophically I find myself in agreement with virtually the whole of it: and not only in agreement with it, but in deeply moved agreement’. although he did not think Hayek’s philosophy was of much practical use.

Joseph Schumpeter’s Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy also bears the marks of his Viennese experience. It saw success of capitalism leading to a form of corporatism and a fostering of values hostile to it. The intellectual and social climate needed to allow entrepreneurship to thrive would not exist in advanced capitalism. There would not be a revolution. Capitalism’s collapse would come about as majorities voted for the creation of a welfare state and placed restrictions upon entrepreneurship, eventually destroying the capitalist structure.

That is not quite what happened. (Those who predict the future almost always get it wrong.) A quarter of a century after his death in 1950, there began a reaction against the welfare state, probably as a consequence of technological innovations from computing and the global net. But if the technological innovations slow down, Schumpeter’s thesis may become relevant again.

Central to Schumpeter’s analysis is that the political economy of society evolves. Denying that evolution, closed societies attempt to control it, slow it down and direct it into a dead end. Independently from Popper, Schumpeter is implicitly celebrating the open society, fearful that changing politics will close society down. (Which Western governments are currently attacking the viability of their universities?)

The role of the changing political economy is developed over a much longer period in Karl Polanyi’s The Great Transformation. It is the least known of the four books; perhaps it is the most insightful.

Polanyi’s thesis was invaluable to me when writing In Open Seas: The Economic History of New Zealand. Most of our ancestors who arrived in the nineteenth century had left societies which were already transforming market economies. However, as my book illustrates, Māori experienced the full transformation from pre-market to market society in situ. It was not only fascinating to describe it, but it alerted me to traces of pre-market and partial market behaviour in the immigrant population too. (For instance, small farmers were near subsistence until the arrival of refrigeration.)

Polanyi points out that pre-market societies were based on ‘reciprocity’, ‘redistribution’ and ‘householding’ (I would say villages/kainga) across personal and communal relationships. Economists might describe them as ‘multilateral’.

Industrialisation and the increasing extension of the state undermined these social tendencies, replacing them with formal institutions that aimed to promote a self-regulating market economy, fundamentally altering humankind’s economic relations. In particular the shift from the gift exchange economy to the commercial market one – the great transformation – reduced the importance of interpersonal relationships and anonymous exchanges became much more important. While the shift facilitated the specialisation which is a key element of raising productivity they also impacted on the wider human condition.

The focus on the exchange of goods and services through market-based price mechanisms creates bilateralism and contractualism does not always work – not everywhere. I am hesitant to say too much but I observe that the social work profession (in say, Oranga Tamariki) is torn between treating the child in the multilateral context of an extended whanau and in a one-to-one bilateral context. The tensions exist elsewhere. It is not uncommon to see a multilateral issue being resolved (or attempted to be resolved) with a bilateral solution. (The most common public evidence is in Māori protests, which are often about preserving communal entitlements.)

Polanyi goes on to argue that modern society (he calls it ‘Market Society’) is not the discrete combination of the modern market economy and the modern nation-state but a single human invention. Social protectionism is the natural response to the ‘free’ market attempts to separate itself from the fabric of society; it is a ‘double movement’. Like Schumpeter, he sees capitalism and the welfare state as integral in social evolution.

Soberingly, Polanyi argues that markets cannot be understood solely through economic theory. Rather, they are embedded in social and political logic, which makes it necessary for economic analysts to take politics into account when trying to understand the economy. (They don’t always.)

As in the case of Schumpeter, today’s world looks very different from the one Polanyi was writing about two decades before he died in 1964. But all four books contain a truth which gives an insight into today’s world and the one we are evolving into. The challenge is to use them for the foundation for its analysis. That requires an open mind.

* A fifth seminal book written about the same time by Viennese refugee Oskar Morgenstern (with John von Neumann) was Theory of Games and Economic Behavior but it is in a different area of economics.

** See Richard Cockett’s Vienna: How the City of Ideas Created the Modern World.

A modest attempt to analyse Donald Trump’s tariff policies.

Alfred Marshall, whose text book was still in use 40 years after he died wrote ‘every short statement about economics is misleading with the possible exception of my present one.’ (The text book is 719 pages.) It’s a timely reminder that any short analysis of Trump’s tariff initiatives is likely to be misleading and any long one will be so riddled with caveats that it will be impenetrable.

Over the period during which this column was drafted and checked, there were numerous developments in US tariff policy. It’s become a bit of a rolling maul in which it is not clear whether the man with the ball even knows which kind of football he is playing. The aim of this column is to set out some of the analytic issues which are likely to be relevant, irrespective of where the ball runs.

Who Ultimately Pays a Tariff?

Suppose the US imposed a tariff of 10 percent on New Zealand’s exports of casein to it. New Zealand producers could not pass the additional cost on because they are competing with other exporters. They would have to reduce their price to the US supplier; they would pay the tariff. Suppose instead, that the tariff was imposed on all external suppliers and there was no US production of casein. Then the tariff would be passed on to US consumers. In casein’s case, there is some US production so the burden will be shared between foreign producers and American consumers.

     The balance of the sharing will depend on numerous factors (and change over time) so we cannot tell. Trump sometimes talks as though the tariff will be borne by the external producers but his promise of a positive output response by American producers requires domestic prices to rise. Most commentaries, including the Fed’s (the US central bank), expect the US prices to rise so at least some of the tariff is to be paid by US consumers.

     (Hardly as an aside, at some point raising tariff rates become ineffective, because people just stop importing. The US rate on China is now 145 percent. China’s response is likely to be much more selective – and hurtful.)

Does that mean there will be American inflation?

The general view is that the price rises from the tariff will trigger further domestic price rises, so there will be some inflation. That probably means the Fed will raise its interest rates, which will impact on the world as a whole. We don’t know by how much.

What about the exchange rate?

There is a scenario which expects the US dollar to rise against other currencies. If that were to happen by 10 percent, that would offset a tariff hike of 10 percent (there are caveats). But US exporters would get a lower return. In effect they would carry the burden of the tariff. However, at the time of writing, the US dollar has fallen relative to other major currencies (much to everybody’s surprise). It’s not obvious why it has. Capital markets are fickle; they may be losing confidence in the US dollar as a safe haven. The effect of a fall in the US exchange rate is to add to inflationary pressures.

Why then are share prices volatile – all over the place?

They began falling when Trump announced his ‘reciprocal tariffs’ (more below), probably because investors were mystified by what he meant. Investors like certainty in public policy. They fell further after the more detailed announcement and then recovered a bit when he had the tariff pause.

     Falling share prices do not cause a recession. Rather, in this case they signal that shareholders expect a recession, probably because of an expectation that the tariff hikes and the resulting tariff war will cause a recession (or worse).                            

     This collapse was compounded by volatility in the bond markets, with interest rates rising. The danger they would cause a significant financial crisis enabled US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to persuade Trump to pause his more extreme tariff hikes (China excepted.) On is reminded of the remark of Clinton’s political adviser James Carville ‘I used to think that if there was reincarnation, I wanted to come back as the President or the Pope or as a 400 baseball hitter. But now I would like to come back as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody.’

But wont the tariffs create new opportunities for capital investment?

That is Trump’s intention – in the US anyway. But the policy is so badly worked through, that businesses seem to be putting their investment plans on hold in the expectation there will be further developments. Among them are that Trumps’s tariff implementation is incomplete, not covering some countries* and products**; he is likely to have to change some of what has been announced; they may also change because of US legal*** and political**** developments. Moreover, many tariffed countries promise to retaliate while Trump counter-promises to escalate if they do. A prudent business will hold over its investment plans; how consumers will respond is more speculative.

(* Including Belarus, Cuba, North Korea, Russia.

** Including copper, oil, pharmaceuticals, semiconductors, wood products, and some minerals not available in the US.

*** Including that Trump is taxing without representation.

**** Including that Trump may lose much authority following the 2026 congressional elections.)

What about the (temporarily suspended?) reciprocal tariffs on top of the 10 percent?

They add to the complexity. And they certainly don’t make rational sense. I won’t go on about them but just add one further illustration. New Zealand exports more to the US than we directly import. (We were fortunate not to face a higher tariff because of this fact.) However, we indirectly import from the US by purchasing products from Australia which started off in America. Trump’s strategy focuses on bilateral exchanges and ignores that we live in a multilateral world.

Doesn’t the Trump strategy mean that since I run a deficit with my supermarket, I should charge them a reciprocal tariff?

Your parallel is bizarre enough to illustrate the underlying thinking. To extend it, you will ultimately pay the tariff levy, not the supermarket.

But I buy things from the supermarket because I want them.

Absolutely, and so does the US from the world’s ‘supermarkets’. That is because US consumers (and the American Government) choose to spend more than their revenue. Trump’s tariff policies are not doing very much to address the excess spending. Probably it will continue.

     One further complication is that Trump’s tariffs focus on goods exports and imports. They ignore services which the US exports more than it imports.

Why is that?

One reason is that services are hard to tariff. A customs officer can see a container crossing the border. But how to tariff an American tourist who buys services offshore?

     The other main reason is that Trump seems to have a fetish about manufactures (just as he has one about property). If so, it would be a very distorted view of the US economy where nowadays 70 percent of its production is services and 30 percent goods. It is almost as if Trump has not grasped that the world has changed since he was at university 60 years ago.

You seem very gloomy.

Most serious commentators are. The expectation is that the world is going into a Trump-induced recession – possibly a prolonged one – and that, when it comes out of it, the world economy in general and the US in particular will be less productive. The size of the downturn may depend upon whether the reciprocal tariffs proceed. But there is still the 10 percent general tariff and higher ones on aluminium, cars, steel and China (also on select Canadian and Mexican goods), plus the promised ones on the current omissions.

What does that mean for the Global Order?

That’s a future column but, briefly, rather than making America great again, Trump may be accelerating its downward slide.

Footnote: One of Trump’s Rose Garden statements was that with tariffs ‘we can be so much wealthier than any country, it’s not even believable’. That short statement may be correct.

While there have been decades of complaints – from all sides – about the workings of the Resource Management Act (RMA), replacing is proving difficult. The Coalition Government is making another attempt.

To help answer the question, I am going to use the economic lens of the Coase Theorem, set out by Ronald Coase who was the 1991 Nobel economics laureate ‘for his discovery and clarification of the significance of transaction costs and property rights for the institutional structure and functioning of the economy’.

One form of the theorem is that providing property rights are fully allocated and transaction costs are zero, the ultimate use of a resource in a market economy is independent of how the rights were initially allocated. What the theorem means is that the final use of a piece of land will be irrespective of who initially owned it. So, the RMA (or whatever) will hardly necessary, if the underlying conditions are met.

I am not going to prove the theorem or explore its intricacies. The point for this column’s purposes is that it highlights the importance of property rights and transaction costs in the way that markets work.

That we should keep transaction costs to a minimum is a no-brainer (unless you belong to one of the professions which benefit from the litigation). The focus on the replacement to the RMA has been an attempt to reduce those costs and the time it takes to make a decision (which is another transaction cost). Many see the issue as clumsy administrative design but there is a deeper problem.

Who possesses the relevant property rights? We could, I suppose, compile a sort of doomsday book which listed all the property rights involved. That task would be impractically enormous. So, the law sets down a process to identify the property rights. It is an exercise which takes up time and money – transaction costs.

You may be surprised that the property rights of a resource are not well specified. Is not, for instance, a person’s house their castle with which they can do what they like? As minister responsible Chris Bishop said, ‘your land is your land, until you affect other people.’

Unfortunately the last five words complicate the issue. (I give an example as a footnote.) In practice there are restrictions on what you can do to your property because that may affect others. You may also have joined with your neighbours in challenging a consent on some local development. In effect, you are claiming a property right on the resource. One of the roles of the various hearings is to decide how valid such claims are.

The issue becomes even more difficult when the use of an environmental resource is the issue. Individuals may have strong views on these – perhaps some landscape is precious to them, perhaps it is a heritage building. Again, they are claiming what amounts to a property right.

A particularly difficult issue involves Māori claims of kaitiakitanga (guardianship, protection, stewardship) in their rohe. They are claiming a general property right. Traditionally a Māori community transferred ownership of some of its property, it never transferred kaitiakitanga. Today Māori insist they never relinquished it when their lands were involuntarily taken from them. I leave it to anthropologists, historians, the Waitangi Tribunal and the courts to decide what happened when the transactions were voluntary. (Many transactions were ambiguously ‘voluntary’.)

The current RMA recognises to some degree the implicit kaitiakitanga property right Māori hold in regard to resources. The identification and application of that right adds to transaction costs. As occurs when you attempt to restrict your neighbour or when you, in particular, and greenies, in general, make claims about the future of some environmental or heritage resource. (A further complication is that the sustainability requirements in the RMA give, in effect, property rights to future generations.)

Economists do not have any great expertise in the initial allocation of property rights. Indeed the Coase Theorem says economists interested only in efficiency do not need to. (Any insights they have on equity are shared with many other disciplines.)

Observe that an easy resolution to reducing transaction costs is to eliminate some of the property rights implicit in the RMA. That seems to be one of the changes in the Coalition proposals. And of course, if some property rights are eliminated then other ones are strengthened. It is a kind of privatisation – some people are to lose their property rights (or those they think they have) without compensation.

When the minister talks about ‘property rights’, he is referring only to private property rights, Collective ones are barely mentioned. Expect a lot of public dispute when the Coalition proposals are progressed.

To put the issue in a wider context. One of the ongoing features of economic change over the last few centuries is the replacement of community processes and decision-making (and hence property rights) by individualistic ones. Economics has a theory which suggests that this change increases material output (say, measured by GDP), although the redistribution consequences may be judged inequitable. You will find echoes of this theory in the Coalition’s defence of their resource management proposals. (Recall Keynes’ practical men and women being unwitting slaves of defunct economists.) One of the features of the Coalition’s economic management is the prioritisation of material output over the wider notion of wellbeing that the Ardern-Hipkins Government was pursuing.

As this column has argued, material output is not the same as community wellbeing. It is a political choice which public policy pursues; the Coalition Government knows its answer.

Footnote: As in the case of healthcare, RMA reports focus on failure and rarely mention successes. I did exactly this when I reported that a friend’s elderly garage was munted by an earthquake. He wanted to demolish it so that it did not crash onto a neighbouring property. The consent took a long time. (Fortunately, an earthquake in the interim did not do the demolition, despite it having no consent.) My friend was irritated by the clumsiness of the procedure. But the bare fact he wanted to demolish the garage could disguise a range of other scenarios which affected his neighbour negatively. (I leave your imagination to write the comic novel.) How was the consenting authority to know? And if there was no ‘consenting’ process, how were neighbours to obtain redress if their interests were damaged?

New Zealand’s economic development has always been a partnership between the public and private sectors.

Public-Private-Partnerships (PPPs) have become fashionable again, partly because of the government’s ambitions to accelerate infrastructural development. There is, of course, an ideological element too, while some of the opposition to them is also ideological.

PPPs come in so many different forms that it is tedious to characterise them all. Some of those forms have been used in the past. For instance, the First (Savage-Fraser) Labour Government wanted to accelerate house building to catchup from the housing deficit caused by the Great Depression. It turned to Fletcher Building. (There was even a – rejected – proposal to nationalise the company.)

More recently, the Third (Muldoon) National Government arranged for various companies to develop projects to utilise its energy surplus (including its gas from the Maui gas field). Think Big failed because when the new businesses came online, the world price of oil had fallen and was only about a third of the level that the investments had assumed. Even worse, the Government had given guarantees so that it took the downside risk of low oil prices. It cost taxpayers a fortune.

Those guarantees were secret. That cannot happen today because the law now explicitly states that to be legally valid, any government guarantees must be reported to Parliament. (They are listed in the government accounts as ‘contingent liabilities’.)

Even so, the Think Big failure remains a reminder that a PPP are often about sharing future risk (such as cost overruns, unexpected events – such as delays from Covid lockdowns – and uncertainty about future demand, prices and costs of borrowing). A nice example was the broadband roll out where, in effect, the government accepted the take-up risk, which the private sector was not prepared to bear, but was able to ensure the construction risk remained with the private sector.

The private sector is never enthusiastic at taking on these risks but neither should the public sector be. Trying to cover all these uncertainties is why a PPP agreement often ends up hundreds of pages long.

PPPs were popular in Europe about a quarter of a century ago. Members of the EU were required to constrain their government borrowing to 3 percent of GDP. However, the definition of what was government borrowing did not include the implicit borrowing that occurs under a PPP. It was like your bank asking for a list of all your debts but ignoring anything bought on hire purchase.

New Zealand’s public accounting does not allow such elementary lapses. The public accounts include an item covering the government exposure to PPPs. Here is a list from Note 17 of the Financial Statements of the Government of New Zealand as at 30 June 2024.

• Transmission Gully State Highway   $1,392m

• Puhoi to Warkworth State Highway $1,157m

• Waikeria Corrections Facility            $1,045m

• Education Assets                                  $   934m

• Auckland South Corrections Facility $  373m

• Auckland Prison                                     $   350m

• Total public private partnerships     $5,251m

Of that total, $3.6b still has to be paid by the Government to the private sector and the liability is included in total New Zealand public debt.

So PPPs are not a means of off-balance sheet borrowing. As the Government’s New Zealand PPP Framework: A Blueprint for Future Transactions states: 

     ‘PPP procurement should not be categorised as a financing tool. While the PPP model utilises private finance in support of achieving these enhanced outcomes, spreading infrastructure related cash flows through project finance arrangements is not the purpose of PPP procurement (if it were, this outcome could be achieved more efficiently through general Crown borrowing to finance infrastructure needs). 

     ‘Having private capital at risk for delivery performance offers significant benefits by creating stronger commercial incentives. … With “skin in the game,” they are motivated to prevent performance or availability failures, ultimately enhancing overall accountability and reliability …

     ‘PPP will not be appropriate for all projects. It should be considered alongside a suite of  other procurement and delivery options, all of which will have pros and cons depending on unique project characteristics. 

I guess there is a bit of leeway about what is meant by ‘enhanced outcomes’. For instance, there is much grumbling about how quickly the road surfaces of Transmission Gully have deteriorated (some are already being replaced). What seems to have happened is that in order to meet their construction deadlines and avoid lateness penalties, the contractors skimped on the sealing. However, the contract arrangements require them to maintain the road for some decades, so the resealing is at their cost, not the public’s.

The Transmission Gully contract would be a fascinating case study on how PPPs work, much more use than, say, various studies of British PPPs, which have often proved to be costly disasters through poor management (and are regularly cited by opponents as examples of the dangers of PPPs). There is a Transmission Gully Post-Construction Review from which we can learn lessons. Unfortunately, the contractors and the government are in dispute so it says is not comprehensive. That there is such litigation is a reminder that PPPs can go very wrong.

So PPPs are not a solution to New Zealand’s infrastructural woes. They may make a contribution. But that contribution does not include getting around the debt targets we have set ourselves – hire purchase is out.

There is a European view that those governments who could do PPPs successfully did not need them. In contrast, those who needed PPPs had little chance of successfully pulling them off. Which category do you think New Zealand is in?

PPPs require careful management. We may have some people in the public sector who have the necessary skills and experience but they will not be able to handle all the projects which the government is keen to progress. Using the insufficiently skilled and inexperienced will lead to the kind of disasters that occurred in Britain. Like the sign on so many roadworks, ‘proceed with caution’. But you still roll the vehicle carefully forward.

Note. It would help public discussion and understanding to provide a supplementary account to the main government accounts which set out the government’s infrastructure balance sheet (including its size and the debt which might be attributed to it), and the changes over time. Personally, I would be much more comfortable about the government increasing its borrowing if I knew that it was borrowing to upgrade infrastructure.

Further Reading. The following may be useful

NZ Government: New Zealand PPP Framework: A Blueprint for Future Transactions.

Public Sector Vol 40:2 has a number of articles on PPPs

Craig Rennie: When should you use a PPP? – A bluffer’s guide.

It is said that economists know the price of everything and the value of nothing. That may be an exaggeration but an even better response is to point out economists do know the difference.

They did not at first. Classical economics thought that the price of something reflected the objective cost of producing it – as in the ‘labour theory of value’. (Note the word ‘value’ which was for long interchangeable with ‘price’. Indeed economists still confusingly call the ‘price theory’, ‘the theory of value’.)

However, classical theory generated numerous paradoxes. Clearly water is much more valuable than diamonds. One can go without the latter all one’s life but you need water every day. Yet the price of water is trivial compared to the price of diamonds. Or consider a work of art. The price of the Mona Lisa is fabulous, but you can get good ‘counterfeit’ copies for the cost of production – which involves about as much labour as Leonardo’s original. So why is the original so pricey?

The paradox was resolved in the late nineteenth century by three economists working independently of one another: William Stanley Jevons of Britain, Carl Menger of Austria and Léon Walras of Switzerland. They saw the price reflecting what the market was willing to pay for it. On this foundation rose the formidable edifice of neoclassical economics (which is not the same as ‘neoliberal economics’ although some people confuse them).

I’m going to skip much of the edifice and focus on its central insight that the price is a subjective assessment not an objective fact, especially in regards to financial assets. To begin with a banknote.

A $100 banknote costs about 2 cents to produce – that is its ‘objective’ cost. Yet everyone ignores the 2 cents and focuses on its $100 subjective price. (If there is anyone who does not, I am happy to purchase from them any banknotes they have at the objective price with a handsome margin – say at 5cents.) The immediate reason we work with the subjective price is because we believe it, just as Jevons, Menger and Walras proposed. The belief is underpinned by governments accepting their banknotes at face value for settlements of its accounts such as tax payments.

A banknote is but one example of a financial asset which costs little to produce compared to its face value. Often its subjective price is underpinned by something more tangible. In the case of a mortgage, it may be a house which the mortgage holder acquires if the mortgagee fails to service their mortgage.

A shareholder may believe there will be a flow of future dividends from the company’s profits. Moreover, if the company fails, the shareholder is entitled to a share of the breakup value of the company (which is often less than the total value of the shares). In practice, the shareholder can sell the share to someone else who assesses its price on a similar basis. Thus, the price reflects the subjective sentiments of many would-be purchasers.

What then, are we to make of the share price of, say, Amazon which has never paid a dividend and whose share price – just under $U5 as I write – far exceeds the tangible assets which back it? It might pay a dividend one day, but the skyhook which holds the share-price up is the market sentiment that the share-price will rise and shareholders will benefit from the capital gain.

Or consider a cryptocurrency (such as bitcoin) which has even a less objective value compared to its price than a banknote and, typically, has no tangible assets backing it. So why do people hold a cryptocurrency (currently a bitcoin is over $NZ84,000)? It is because there are others willing to pay that amount when the cryptocurrency is offered on the market. Since they can never expect to get a dividend, one assumes purchasers expect the market price to rise (that is, others will pay a higher price one day), and they can convert their purchase into ordinary currency which they can use to purchase something more tangible.

This is a kind of Ponzi scheme for which investors get their return by selling out to an incoming investor who in turn hopes to sell out at a higher price to a later incoming investor. It requires a long-run rising price for the cryptocurrency. Stein’s law says if it can’t go on forever, it won’t. At some point the appreciation will cease, the price will stagnate and crash.

(There is no theory which predicts exactly when the crash will happen. If there was, users knowing when there will be a crash, would bail out a little before, causing the crash earlier, so the forecast would be wrong.)

Does the crash matter? There have been three major crashes of bitcoin (as an example) in the past. Its price fell about eight-tenths (in $NZ) between December 2017 and December 2018; it fell almost five-tenths in May 2021; it fell about seven-tenths between November 2021 and October 2022. (Other cryptocurrencies have slightly different stories.) In none of the three cases were there widespread repercussions to the rest of the financial system (although individual holders suffered). This was partly because cryptocurrencies are marginal in the totality of the giant financial system, but critically, there is not enough interdependence with it. In simple terms. investors in crytpocurrencies do not seem to be borrowing to invest. It is the borrowing which causes a proper financial crash as the holders’ losses ripple out through the system, impacting on innocent people who had not realised that their savings were tangentially involved in cryptocurrency speculation.

In the Minsky cycle of speculation, financial markets go into a phase in which there is heavy borrowing by investors; hence the big crash which follows. I do not know whether the cryptocurrency markets have reached that stage. (Another complication is when there is fraud, embezzlement and theft.)

The purpose here has been to illustrate how a market can flourish even when what is being transacted has no ‘objective’ value in the sense which classical economics understood it. (Ironically, though, David Ricardo who set out the Labour Theory of Value, made his fortune on the share market.) It was understanding of the subjective theory of value (price) which enables us to understand better how financial markets work.

The price of financial assets reflects the sentiment of those in the market; they may be totally detached from the tangible and objective. But that sentiment can be like reef fish, quickly switching from one direction to another. Sometimes a switch crashes the financial system which impacts on the real economy.

Footnote: Cryptocurrencies can – like a banknote – be used as a medium of exchange for purchasing or paying off debt. That is not a major feature (except for paying debts in dark markets). It is suggested that the government could accept cryptocurrencies for payment of debts to it. (This is different from banks exploring whether they can efficiently use blockchains in conventional currencies.) A prudent government would immediately switch the cryptocurrency it receives into a more conventional currency. Thus its holdings would be small – till money. El Salvador proposed to make bitcoin legal tender. Its economy is a bit of a financial basket case. When it was recently bailed out by the IMF it was required it to scale back its crypto ambitions. The IMF was wary of lending while bitcoin was legal tender because its volatile price posed a risk to financial and fiscal stability. My personal view is that a government should not get into investing in financial speculation, no matter how promising the gains might appear to be in the short run. Recall how Nick Leeson brought Barings Bank to its knees.

Note The prices used here applied at 21 March, 2025

By international standards the New Zealand healthcare system appears satisfactory – certainly no worse generally than average. Yet it is undergoing another redisorganisation.

While doing some unrelated work, I came across some international data on the healthcare sector which seemed to contradict my – and the conventional wisdom’s – view of the healthcare sector. Broadly, the sector seems to be performing relatively well and does not seem underfunded compared to other OECD healthcare systems.

The details are here but, in summary, the OECD report thought that we were close to the OECD average on most of its health indicators, but we were better than average in regard to self-rated health, smoking, air pollution, and effective secondary care (dealing with heart attacks and stroke). We were doing badly only on obesity (we knew that). In the international pecking order our health expenditure is seventh as a share of GDP and sixth if we adjust for the age-structure (we have a relatively younger population than those ranked close to us) and for price differences (the cost of the same care is lower).

The US-based Commonwealth Fund confines its international comparisons to only ten countries. New Zealand ranks in the top half on all  its dimensions – fourth on overall rankings, third on health outcomes – with the exception of equity where we rank second-to-bottom above the US. (One is surprised they can even make a judgement given that unlike most affluent nations we have no unmet needs survey.)

There is so much widespread grumbling about the New Zealand healthcare system, I was surprised at this data although I am cautious because international comparisons tend to be treacherous. What we overlook in our insularity is that there is widespread grumbling everywhere else too. Even so, the grumbling deserves careful analysis.

Failures

First, occasionally failures happen in the health system, mistakes which can be tragic for the individual and their families. Usually, they involve an individual incident. To be realistic, such mistakes are bound to happen in any system as large as a healthcare one, where there are literally millions of potential incidents every year, and where clinical rather than mechanical judgement is involved. (There can also be impatience with delayed diagnosis; that’s because healthcare is more complicated than deciding who won a race.)

The aim has to be to minimise such occurrences and to give as good redress as possible when they happen. We probably have a reasonably effective arrangement with the Health and Disability Commissioner – perhaps the commission is underfunded and a bit slow as a result – and ACC. The grumbling is a part of this continuous improvement process. But it does not prove the system is failing. (There is a bias, because we do not hear reports of the successes, which happen far more often; good news is not news.)

Occasionally failures are systemic, involving the wider system. They will happen, but in the ones I have looked at, the remediation has taken too long, suggesting the upper bureaucracy is not as committed to continuous improvement in the way that medical professionals are. Typically, such systemic failures are local. Expecting even higher bureaucrats based in Wellington to do better seems implausible.

Access

There are different sorts of access issues. There are going to be locational challenges; it is not going to be possible to provide heart surgery in Hokitika. Similarly, there will be treatments which are too rare, specialised or new to provide anywhere in New Zealand so those needing them may have to go offshore. Again, continuous improvement bringing them onshore – often backed by research (as is happening with CAR T-cell therapy for cancer) – is the long-run solution.

Sometimes a treatment is just too expensive to be a realistic option. Consider a drug which costs a million dollars a pop (and if you don’t think that is expensive, I haven’t told you how many pops are necessary, nor how little quality of life the drug generates). Yet, the patient who needs the treatment may think it is their last chance; it’s an easy news story too. In a constrained budget system, providing the treatment is at the expense of other healthcare services and treatments which may generate far greater quality of life. This has been a particular concern in regard to expensive pharmaceuticals being pushed by their Big Pharma providers.

A big access issue is waiting times, including for emergency, seeing a specialist (and increasingly for some, alas, even a GP) or for treatment. This seems to be a mix of inadequate funding and inadequate staffing (which requires a far greater commitment to labour-force planning than has been evident for three decades). An especially uncomfortable issue is the ‘ghost’ waiting lists, those in need who do not even get to a doctor. A particular case involves Māori and Pasifika with cancer who are getting into the healthcare system when the disease is far advanced. (It is this situation which led the Commonwealth Fund study to down-rate us for equity.)

Is the healthcare system failing?

So the New Zealand healthcare system has a number of challenges, as do all the other systems we compare ourselves with. We are more ambitious than just pacing ourselves with the rest of the affluent. We want to do better – so do they. To do better we need to intensify continuous improvement. I am not sure that the generic management which dominates the system copes with this very well, because continuous improvement relies on the integrity of the professionals which the managers do not trust.

There may well be accounting problems. (See here.) But it would seem that is not impacting as badly upon the delivery of healthcare as much as one feared. Long may that be so.

And yet we keep redisorganising the top of the healthcare system. National’s second was announced last week, somewhat reversing its earlier one. I despair. Let’s agree they can’t get it right. Which is not surprising since there is rarely any careful review of why the system which is about to be replaced has failed. The next one is likely to fail too. The problem is that each redisorganisation fails to put the medical professionals at the heart of system. Look after them and they will look after their patients. If they are not trusted to perform as well as the international comparisons suggest, we end up with heavily over-managed and not well-performing layers above them.

The underlying message of this column is that rushing around claiming the system is in crisis without a careful analysis is dangerous. I first saw the danger when in the 1980s people of goodwill said the New Zealand healthcare system was terrible. (There were no international comparisons in those days.) The neoliberals said they had a solution. Their proposed redisorganisation of the early 1990s was quack medicine and, not unexpectedly, made many people worse off – some died because of it.

Yes, we can do better if we aspire to do better and we trust our professionals. It requires more funding to increase and retain the healthcare labour force (the drain to Australia is a threat), it requires a commitment to professional-led continuous improvement, it requires better analysis at the top which begins with careful diagnosis and does not end with a nostrum unrelated to the actual disease.

Peter Frankopan’s The Earth Transformed: An Untold History is a compelling account of the interaction between humans and the environment. We would be unwise to ignore it.

The Silk Roads: A New History of the World by Oxford professor of history Peter Frankopan was initially widely admired. But critics point out that the book exaggerated the significance of the land connection between Europe and East Asia. In his The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World William Dalrymple makes a convincing case that the main trading routes were by sea and they played a part in the critical role in the contribution that the Indian subcontinent made to the world in the 1500 years from the beginning of the common era (when Europe was backward).

But the dispute on the transport routes understates Frankopan’s achievement. He centres his history of the Eurasian world near Persia, rejecting the Eurocentric world histories that most of us grew up with. Dalrymple’s book reinforces that re-centering. My guess is that in a few generations’ time, students will be taught history from a less European-centred perspective.

As if the heroic task of getting us to think differently about the geography of world history was insufficient, Frankopan’s latest book The Earth Transformed aims to change our perceptions about the interaction between human history and the environment.

Obviously, this writer of Not in Narrow Seas: The Economic History of Aotearoa New Zealand is sympathetic. When I began the book, I knew it would finish with climate change because it illustrates how New Zealand is so dependent on the outside world over which it has little control.

As I wrote the book, I learned that there had been climate change in the past (although more moderate than we expect to happen in the future). Both the proto-Māori migration to the country of 700 years ago and the European visits which began 250 years ago occurred in times of a favourable climate for long-distance sailing. (Abel Tasman was not so fortunate.) The deterioration shortly after the proto-Māori arrival probably explains why there were so few return voyages. As anthropologist Atholl Anderson has shown, the climate change which happened after had Māori settlement shifting from the drying east side of the country to the wetter west.

Frankopan has a stronger story to tell. Climate change did not just impact on humans, sometimes human settlements impacted upon the climate. That is not so astonishing today given what is happening via carbon emissions and global warming. But it happened in the past, albeit on a smaller scale.

Coming to think of it, there may have been a local instance although my book did not pay much attention to it. Shortly after the proto-Māori arrived, much of the South Island forest cover was reduced. Some think this was a consequence of climate change but others think the proto-Māori started the fires. I am willing to compromise by saying both (while acknowledging that Māori society learnt from the experience and evolved to a more sustainable culture). Given the sort of settlements at the time, the economic impact did not seem to be great so I did not emphasise it. Frankopan, concerned with the whole world and his much longer time-frame gives many more examples which usually had a bigger impact on – some civilisations were extinguished. (He is so assiduous with his examples that they over-power the reader.)

Frankopan is able to do this because in recent years scientists have developed ingenious means of measuring climate change in the long distant past. (Another impressive ‘archaeological’ breakthrough is Svante Pääbo’s development of methods to evaluate the genomes of extinct hominins for which he was awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine.)

To give but one example of the environmental story in history, if you have visited Mycenae, the legendary city of Agamemnon who led the Achaean (Greek) forces at Troy, you will be struck by its poor location, 19kms from the sea on a tiddly river and hardly in a hospitable area. Part of the explanation is that Greece is a tectonically active area and the land has lifted with the sea retreating. But assuredly, three and more millennia ago the land around Mycenae was heavily wooded area. Deforestation changed the local climate and the soil eroded into the valley below. Eventually Mycenae was abandoned.

It is instructive that standard histories of Mycenae ignore the environment. We tend to interpret its history – and much elsewhere – as if there is no environmental change. Frankopan would say that is a nonsense. His 700-page book has example on example going back three millennia of human-environment interaction.

It does not confine itself just to the climate. Civilisations have come to grief by their careless treatment of water when they exhausted an aquifer or when rising salinity undermined their agriculture. He also traces the impact of pandemics, which had a climate dimension.

Almost every example is small in terms of the total globe and the human time on it, although empires have risen and fallen because of climate change. But the process is slow in terms of most of our preoccupations. What is unusual today is that because there are so many of us and because our resource usage is so intensive, the change is much faster.

It took a bit of trouble when I was writing In Narrow Seas to get a measure of just how much climate change has occurred since coal-burning industrialisation began. It turns out that New Zealand temperatures have risen about 1°C since the start of last century, while global sea levels rose about 20 cm in that time. Sometimes I look at a sandy beach trying to envisage what it was like a century ago. A common estimate of the maximum gradient is about 1 in 8. That would mean the sea would be at least a metre and a half or so further out. We think the levels are rising faster nowadays. We cannot be sure how much faster, but it seems to be reasonable to imagine a grandchild will one day look at that beach and the sea may be three metres closer.

I’ve already stated the primary lesson from the book: do not assume the environment is static, that any changes are irrelevant to human destiny and that civilisation has no impact on the environment (including on the climate).

This lesson was there millennia ago, but we show little evidence of having learned it. It’s like the story of the frog in the slowly warming pot of water who boils to death. Experiments show it is not true for frogs – they jump out. It seems truer for humans.

Of all the headline-making, world-reshaping actions of the second Trump administration thus far, perhaps the most defining is the United States’ vote against the resolution condemning Moscow’s invasion and supporting Ukraine’s territorial authority. The US has used its security council veto and superpower heft in questionable ways before, but this vote alongside Russia and other strongman states such as North Korea, Belarus, and Hungary was Trump switching sides; the clearest of statements that Donald Trump’s America is a very different place from the America of Dwight Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan, and George H.W. Bush. America could have abstained from the vote against an unquestionable invasion of a sovereign nation by a dictator-led nuclear power; it did not. At a time when GOP politicians are lining up to applaud even Trump’s most controversial moves, one senator, John Curtis of Utah, even dared to say he was “deeply troubled” by the vote. “This posture is a dramatic shift from American ideals of freedom and democracy”, he wrote.

Well, it’s reassuring at least one member of the once proud party of Lincoln and Eisenhower can see it. Because it should be troubling to any democrat (small ‘d’), that the Trump administration did not take what every US president in 100 years would have seen as the most basic and unquestionable stance in defence of freedom and national sovereignty. Instead, Trump sided with a different group of ideals.

If you look at the leaders who instructed their ambassadors at the UN to vote in sympathy with Russia, you see Trump applying for membership of a new club. The strongman club. A club that eschews the traditions of American power – a power largely based on liberal democratic ideals – in favour of a power based on taking. A power of short-term self interest. A power that says, above all, might is right.

Yes, the rhetoric has long been there but to side with dictators at the UN is still shocking. Yet these are the countries and leaders that Trump is clearly impressed by and instinctively drawn to. Men who will make a deal about the lives of millions – for as long as it suits them; who will renege in a heartbeat; who claim the right of the powerful to take what they want, when they want it, simply because they are powerful.

This is where the gap is growing between Trump and America’s traditional allies in the West. The West, however you describe that entity and whatever its flaws in practice, was built on ideals of democracy, the rule of law, free trade, individual rights, and sovereign nationhood. America has many times succumbed to the magnetism of economic power, of national self-interest, of political paranoia, but, as Winston Churchill famously said, America can always be relied on to do what is right once it has exhausted every other possible option.

At least, it could. At the core of American foreign policy since World War II has been a belief in its responsibility to support liberal democracies and freedom-loving peoples everywhere, to back a rules-based order (while often trying to skew the rules in its favour). It – usually – acted as if there were greater goods – free trade, national sovereignty, democracy etc. On the flip side, totalitarian regimes and things that diminished the democracies and choices of a free world were to be opposed.

Trump views the world differently, and the UN vote (and the subsequent abandonment of Ukraine re arms and intelligence) shows he’s willing to act on those views. Trump as a leader is out for what he can get. He’s not interested in an 80-year alliance with European democracies that has helped build continental unity; that have allowed nations in Europe to spend less money on their military to fight each other and more on economic growth. Previous presidents have seen the value in a peaceful Europe that doesn’t draw America into wars. It creates trading partners. It creates democratic political partners. It helps the money go round so people on both sides of the Atlantic prosper. The Trump administration, as Fareed Zakaria has said, reckons that’s a policy for suckers. Only suckers think of the greater good. Strongmen? Well, they’re interested in what is good for them, right here, right now.

Trump’s America First strategy makes little room for win-wins. Every choice is a zero-sum game. By this calculation the United States’ support of Europe and NATO means America has not taken as much as it could have. It’s time to line up America’s erstwhile friends and make sure they start paying for what America has given over the years. Ukraine’s mineral deal to pay back support for the war is the first ‘renegotiation’ (read betrayal). The tariffs against Canada and Mexico, the second. Who knows what comes next?

The idea that American foreign policy has, in giving aid, protection, and support to democracies has both made the world safer for more people while also allowing the US to become the world’s only superpower and dominate 21st century economics, makes no sense to Trump. He sees only wins and losses. There’s no clear target of what he means by American greatness, but it seems to focus on squeezing every drop of blood, oil, and treasure from every relationship it has. To the Trumps of the world, as with the Putin, Xi’s, Netanyahu’s, and Orbans, this is what strength looks like.

It seems Europe is not entirely unprepared for this turn of events. And, whatever you think of Trump’s strongman urges, it may not be an entirely bad thing for the continent. At least, so long as you don’t live on its far eastern fringes.

On the plus side, this American shift forces Europe to define itself and its liberal values more strongly, as distinct from the values of Trump. It forces Europe to look at its own military strength and realize that without American patronage, there’s a risk other bullies could take advantage. It perhaps forces them to look at their own slightly worn economies. It forces them to work more closely together.

It is, at the end of the day however, still an increase in military spending. It means more guns, more bombs, more soldiers looking for a target; it creates the scope for tensions between countries down the track, where previously across Europe’s lower defence spending meant less likelihood of another war on that continent; a continent where wars twice in the 20th century caused the deaths of millions.

Maybe Ukraine and the UN vote is an aberration; to talk about a ‘Trump doctrine’ at this stage perhaps gives too much credit to a man whose principles seem flexible, even erratic, and attention span limited. But in short order we’ve had enough words now from Trump, Vance and Hegseth to indicate the path they’re on. Trump may like to declare, “America is back”, but for the rest of the world this is a new, scary America.

For those on the right, the US is siding with the countries on the right side of the culture wars; but they should not mistake this as a move in favour of conservatism. With Musk at his side, Trump is actively looking to disrupt. For those on the left, an isolationist America that withdraws from the world stage is something they have wished for for decades. They have often asked America to butt out, pointing to governments overthrown in south America and Asia, wars in the Middle East, and nuclear tests in the Pacific as examples of US bullying. But they now are confronted by the flipside of American involvement and what it has brought in terms of security and democracy.

As we see the outline of the Trump doctrine start to get coloured in by actions like the UN vote, it raises several concerns for New Zealand.

First, we might wonder what Trump’s abandonment of Europe and liberal democratic values more broadly might mean in the Pacific. We see tariffs imposed on three Pacific nations and might wonder who is next. We wonder if China and stopping its rise might mean more of a focus for this administration and create more tensions in our neighbourhood.

Second, we might reconsider how we handle our relationship with both the US and China. As China under Xi has turned into more of a dictatorship in the past decade, New Zealand has inched closer to America on many non-trade issues. We are closer to the US now than we have been since the nuclear-free debate of the 1980s. That tilt towards the US under the past three governments now comes with a new level of risk and must give us pause for thought. It’s not hard to imagine us needing to stand up against the Trump doctrine on issues of tariffs, trade, and territory (more on that last one in a sec).

Third, and perhaps most importantly, Trump’s abandonment of Ukraine and articulation of a ‘might is right’ approach to foreign policy is terrible news for small nations everywhere. Trump has made it clear he does not understand why a powerful country like the US should give a damn about a small country like Ukraine, unless it can gain wealth or power. There is no sense that countries are obliged to stand up for rules in service of a greater good. As I noted earlier, Trump doesn’t believe in a greater good.

And if Ukraine is a small country of no value, easily sacrificed, then how much smaller and more dispensable is New Zealand? We have built our foreign policy and economy on a belief that rules matter, the world operates best when there is trade and connection, and everybody plays fair. Trump is joining a club of world leaders who don’t care about rules.

Which leads me to one final thought. While many of Trump’s supporters voted for his promise to get out of the world’s business, thus allowing more money to be spent domestically on Americans, the president’s ‘might is right’ worldview cuts against their expectations. Politically risky. But more than else, he seems weirdly wedded to a desire to expand. Real estate, it seems, still matters immensely to him. One of the most consistent refrains from Trump this term is a belief that America should take more land. Canada has resources, it should be the 51st state. America wants shipping lanes, so seize the Panama Canal. Interests in the Artic? “Get” Greenland. Mars is even a priority. What happens when someone mentions Antarctica to him? His expansionist words aren’t taken terribly seriously, but surely by now we realise these riffs aren’t just riffs. We should take him at this word; Trump wants more real estate.

It’s no coincidence that in that United Nations vote, he stood alongside countries that have no qualms about taking territory that doesn’t belong to them; Russia in Ukraine, of course, but also Israel in the occupied territories, and China with its claims to Taiwan and areas in the South China Sea. Perhaps one of the reasons Trump finds it so hard to condemn Russia’s land grab in Ukraine is that he imagines he might want to do some land-grabbing of his own in the next four years.

It seems clear Trump’s foreign policy is based on a view that laws and borders are negotiable depending on who has the cards, strong countries have the right to take from weaker countries, and that America’s commitment to liberal democracies has been a policy for suckers. That UN vote signals trouble ahead for small countries like ours that rely on rules, trade and peace to prosper. It’s hard to imagine that some time in the next four years the relationship between America and New Zealand won’t be strained at some point. Then, some hard reckoning will be required.