Trade and Investment Minister Todd McClay is heading to Britain and France for two of the most senior trade meetings on New Zealand’s calendar, arguing that the country’s export relationships are doing the heavy lifting for an economy that voters keep telling pollsters is their biggest worry.
The government announced that McClay will jointly chair the third ministerial meeting of the New Zealand–United Kingdom Free Trade Agreement Joint Committee in the UK, before travelling to Paris to vice-chair the annual OECD Economic and Trade Ministerial Council Meeting. It is a busy itinerary for a minister who has spent much of the past year selling the idea that open markets, rather than domestic spending, are the surest route back to higher incomes.
The timing is deliberate. The trip lands almost exactly three years after the New Zealand–UK deal came into force, and the figures the government is leaning on are genuinely strong. Two-way trade between the two countries reached a record 7.4 billion dollars in 2025. New Zealand exports to Britain have climbed 75 per cent over the three years the agreement has been running, with goods exports up more than 22 per cent in 2025 alone and business services exports up 28 per cent.
“Strong UK consumer demand for our premium products has driven a 75 per cent increase in total New Zealand exports to this market in the three years of our Agreement,” McClay said in the announcement. He singled out meat as a key driver of the goods growth, alongside the quieter but fast-growing trade in business services.
In London the minister is due to meet the UK Secretary of State for Business and Trade, Peter Kyle, and the Minister of State for Trade, Chris Bryant. The joint committee meeting is the formal mechanism for reviewing how the agreement is working in practice, including tariff phase-outs, rules of origin and any irritants that have surfaced as trade volumes have grown. For exporters of red meat, wine, kiwifruit and honey, the detail of how those commitments are being honoured matters far more than the headline that the deal exists at all.
From there McClay moves to Paris and a very different kind of gathering. As vice-chair of the OECD ministerial meeting he will help steer discussions among the world’s wealthier economies on the state of the global trading system, cross-border investment and the rules that govern both. New Zealand has long punched above its weight in these forums, where small open economies argue hardest for predictable rules because they have the least ability to throw their weight around.
“The OECD is an important forum for New Zealand and like-minded partners to share our experience on common challenges, and benefit from world-class policy expertise and analysis,” McClay said. While in Paris he is also expected to hold bilateral meetings with counterparts from the European Union, Canada, China and Germany, a spread that reflects how widely New Zealand now has to hedge its trade bets.
That hedging has taken on a sharper edge in recent weeks. Global oil markets have been rattled by tension in the Middle East, fuel prices have climbed, and the cost of moving goods around the world has crept up with them. A trading nation at the bottom of the world feels those shocks early and keenly, which is part of why the government is so keen to be seen locking in stable, rules-based access to its biggest markets rather than leaving exporters exposed to whatever the next disruption brings.
The political backdrop is impossible to ignore. New Zealanders go to the polls on 7 November, and Parliament will be dissolved on 1 October. Recent polling has consistently put the cost of living at the very top of voters’ concerns, well ahead of health, the economy in general and petrol prices. The coalition’s pitch is that trade growth eventually flows through to wages and jobs, and McClay reached for exactly that argument in the announcement.
“One in four New Zealand jobs depends on trade, and strengthening these relationships creates opportunities for Kiwi businesses, meaning higher incomes and more jobs,” he said.
Critics are likely to test how quickly that promised flow-through is reaching households. The most recent Budget drew protests from students over fees and rising course costs, and official figures released around Budget week showed the number of children in material hardship higher than it was three years ago. The government’s answer has been that export-led growth is the only durable way to lift the resources available for everything else, a case that is easier to make in a committee room in London than at a kitchen table in South Auckland.
For now, the substance of the trip is real even if the politics are unavoidable. The UK agreement is one of the few unambiguous economic bright spots of the term, the OECD meeting gives a small country a seat at a large table, and the bilateral meetings in Paris keep doors open with partners that matter. Whether any of it shifts the conversation back home, where the cost of a tank of petrol and a weekly shop still dominates, is another question entirely.
With the election now just over five months away, every overseas trip by a senior minister is being read through a campaign lens. If you want to work out where you sit before you vote, you can compare the parties on trade, tax and the cost of living using our voting tool.
What do you make of the government’s trade-led economic argument heading into the election? Is it reaching your household yet? Tell us in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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