Mike's Minute: Why is Retail NZ calling for tariffs?

Author: Mike Hosking ,
Publish Date: Wed, 8 Jul 2026, 10:46am

It's hard to reconcile but the power of self interest is never to be underestimated.

Retail NZ is loving the look of the EU, who this month started a new tariff on cheap goods.

It's three euro per package for anything under 150 euros.

It's aimed at Temu and co.

It's an easy argument to make because who likes Temu? Who likes cheap, nasty, tacky, plastic-y stuff that pollutes the world and is made in mass factories, paying people dirt wages, if not slave wages? But the answer is, apparently, heaps of us.

Nothing sells a product to more people, more often, than a cheap price tag and that is why China is a powerhouse and that is why your Temu's have conquered the world.

So Retail NZ wants us to "do an EU" and tariff the same way.

The trouble is we are free traders. We basically invented free trade, we are good at free trade, and in terms of doing business with the world, no one operates an easier-access marketplace than us.

And boy have we, and we are, doing well out of it. Given that, you can't then go and be something else when it suits you.

Tariffs are poison because for every person you protect, someone else picks up the bill. And for every tariff you generate, you invite another player to generate one back.

We are the luckiest of consumers right now because we have lived through a moment in history where tariffs and their destructive outreaches have been on full display with thanks to the US President.

For a while there it looked like the free trade train that had built up a serious head of steam over the past 50 years was in danger of being completely derailed. The US unilaterally and randomly applied numbers to goods pulled out of a hat.

The Supreme Court quelled it. It's still not over, but Trump is going back and forth.

As a result, normal-ish business will be resumed with a Rubio, Vance, or Newsom-type White House.

In the meantime, as we revel in our continually record-breaking revenue streams from beef and lamb and kiwifruit to India, the US, China, and the EU, it's no time to be sending mixed messages on the way we conduct business.

Retail NZ – back in your box.