let’s take a look at NZ. facts:
NZ keeps a very tight control on immigrant labor.
NZ top exports (71%) are according to IMF.
At the more granular four-digit Harmonized Tariff System code level, New Zealand’s number 1 export product is cow’s milk followed by sheep or goat milk.
Dairy, eggs, honey: US$10.2 billion (27.6% of total exports)
Meat: $4.7 billion (12.7%)
Wood: $3.3 billion (9%)
Fruits, nuts: $1.9 billion (5.1%)
Beverages, spirits, vinegar: $1.4 billion (3.7%)
Fish: $1.1 billion (3.1%)
Cereal/milk preparations: $1.1 billion (2.9%)
Machinery including computers: $978.6 million (2.6%)
Modified starches, glues, enzymes: $884.6 million (2.4%)
NZ top trade partners are 1 china and 2 australia. then UK/EU.
NZ imports mostly cars and various machinery. Their imports recently spiked in 2016/2017 according to source.
so if they had tariffs, they must have been protecting farms and farm goods which compete directly with ours (can’t blame them for that)? unlikely. or their own machinery (china, computers?) maybe.
or more likely they were trying to keep importers of finished goods out and hurting their own retail industry and consumer market employment in the process? (the article cites improved employment. that could come from more imports.
anyway, it’s immediately clear that any parallel of this economy to the US is pretty bogus.
in short, this is an agrarian/socialist economy which is relatively small. it looks like it hasn’t got any real manufacturing base to protect anyway which is the reason for American tariffs.
the local farmers are protected from immigrant labor (a kind of labor tariff) probably because they don’t want to end up like us.
they trade mostly with china and australia so that is probably where the farm goods go and probably have always gone. no trade war there i think.
verdict: could investigate further but not convinced by NZ that so called “free trade” is good for us.
That’s my point. Tariffs or not nobody would send milk and lamb to NZ. But it would be stupid for them to impose tariffs on machinery and other stuff they don’t build domestically.
At least they let in South African whites. They are extremely anal though. Very politically correct.