Kerre Woodham: How do you operate in an environment like this?

The phrase “may you live in interesting times” is bestowed not as a blessing, but as a curse. And living in these most interesting of times, you can see why that might be. That's not even taking into account the previous five years – if we just take 2025 as our year of living in interesting times, you can see why it might be a curse.   

Donald Trump raised tariffs on goods from China to 125%. Tariffs against seventy-five other countries are paused for 90 days with a 10% tariff because they were getting “yippy”. US share markets, which had been in freefall, have now rocketed higher. The Dow closed up 7.9%, the S&P500 closed up 9.5%, and the tech heavy NASDAQ was up 12.5% – this was all happening overnight. The normally phlegmatic Eric Crampton of the New Zealand Institute was about as ruffled as I've ever heard him this morning, talking to Mike Hosking on the Mike Hosking Breakfast.  

“Well, I was expecting more chaos and we're still getting it. So I had a bit of insomnia – wake up at 4am, okay tariffs are still on. Wake up at 6:30am, okay tariffs look like they're gonna be off. It is really hard for any business to plan in this kind of environment – the chaos is just going to continue. The guy who's responsible for administering the tariffs was talking for two hours about how great the tariffs are and how they're going to keep implementing them, and was told during his speech that Trump had put a 90 day pause on the tariffs. He presumably hadn't known before Trump did it. I don't think that there's any plan here at all.” 

Yeah. As for New Zealand exporters, well, I don't know. Founder of Egmont Honey, James Annabell told Ryan Bridge last night they're scrambling. 

“We've got five or six containers on the water which I believe are exempt actually, which is great, but I know that for a fact that we've got about 10 containers due to leave sort of end of April/May, which will all be subject to 10% tariffs. So we were obviously scrambling when we got the news last week. I believe anything that left before Saturday last week, we're exempt. I could be wrong there – an expert will probably ring in and say I'm wrong, but we understand that what's on the water now is okay, but the containers to come are all going to be subject to that 10%.” 

So how do you operate in an environment like this? For those of us not directly affected by the goings on in the United States —we're all ultimately affected, but not directly for many of us— it's a case of grab the popcorn and watch it play out. Take the White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt's approach: shrug and say boys will be boys, pass the popcorn. But for many Kiwis, they are having to try to make sense of all this to survive.    

The PM's just delivered a speech to the Wellington Chamber of Commerce, where he said, among other things, that the events of the recent days are the most significant challenge to the rules-based trading system since the general Agreement on Tariffs and Trade was formed in 1947. He told attendees that the direct impact on the New Zealand economy from the US tariffs announced last week is likely to be around $900 million, or roughly 0.2% of GDP. But the second order consequences of a region and a world retreating from trade and increasingly uncertain about its economic future will be more significant, despite the welcome news of de-escalation this morning, he said.  

I know for many businesses keeping an eye offshore and for those New Zealander’s watching their KiwiSaver accounts, that could be confronting. He said, the exporters I've spoken to in recent days remain buoyant, rightly confident in the quality of their product and their ability to navigate choppy waters. But for countries whose prosperity is underpinned by global trade, the months ahead will be challenging for their economic interests, and many commentators will see these events as the next step in a longer-term trend towards economic security and national resilience, as countries ensure themselves against emerging geopolitical threats. He said he's not ready to throw in the towel and declare an end to the era of free market and free trade. He said, Kiwis have worked too hard and for too long to give up on the values and institutions which have seen our country and the region we live in thrive.   

If you lived in the 70s and remembered the 70s, we were one of the most closed economies outside of Eastern Europe, outside of the Communist nations. Anybody who bought anything overseas cut off the label and hoped they weren't picked up by customs, otherwise a tariff was applied when you brought it back into the country. Because we made our own bras, and we made our own T-shirts, and we made our own Swanndris and rugby jerseys – everything was produced in New Zealand. And people had wages, and they lived in small towns, and they there were factories everywhere, and then it exploded. The old New Zealand was gone and a new world order came in, for better and worse. I'm not entirely sure we can go back to those days, nor indeed would we want to. And perhaps it will all calm itself down over the next, but who knows? Like I say, grab the popcorn. 

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