Andrew Needs is New Zealand's High Commissioner to Canada, based in Ottawa, with cross-accreditations to Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados and Guyana. Andrew took up his current role in January 2010. From 2008-2010 Andrew served as Foreign Policy Adviser to the New Zealand Foreign Minister, based in the Minister's office in Parliament. Andrew is on his second assignment in Canada, having also served as Deputy High Commissioner from 2004-2008. Previous overseas assignments have included Australia and the Cook Islands. Andrew took two years out from the Ministry in the mid nineties to take up the role of Director of Economic and Development Policy at the Forum Secretariat in Fiji. Head office based roles have included time in the Pacific, Australia, Sth East Asia, Economic and Development Assistance Divisions. Andrew is in Canada with his wife Bronwyn and two teenage sons, Matthew and Oliver. They enjoy biking and kayaking in the summer and skating/skiing and snowboarding in the winter.

United States Trade Representative, Ron Kirk, visited Ottawa last week for talks with his counterpart, Trade Minister Peter Van Loan.  I attended a lunch where Kirk was the guest speaker.

 

Not surprisingly, given the audience, the focus of his comments tended to be on the importance of the Canada-US bilateral trade and investment relationship, within the NAFTA context, which of course includes Mexico. 

 

Most interesting for me was when Kirk went bigger picture and reaffirmed the US administration’s strong focus on enhanced trade liberalisation (in all forms: bi, multi and plurilateral) as a vital part of the US’s economic recovery plan.

 

Kirk acknowledged that while the US’s trade strategy was truly global, the primary engine for current, and it would seem, future growth, was Asia.

 

In that regard Kirk was further buttressing the US’s decision last year to become part of the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) process.  TPP currently includes US, Australia, New Zealand, Peru, Chile, Singapore, Brunei, Vietnam and is working on developing an agreed high quality FTA that could form a basis for wider membership and greater economic integration in our Asia-Pacific region.