Is NZ Fashion worth saving at any cost?

Why do some local industries think they should avoid the inevitable, and who truly pays for it?

Before we get into the meat of this article - more acid than meat really, if you like it when I get a bit spicy you’re in for a treat - allow me a bit of an economic history lesson… one by someone completely unqualified to teach either History or Economics. 

I will spare you a detailed history of tariffs, there are many people far better equipped to discuss those than I am. Long story short, New Zealand once had an automotive manufacturing sector. 

Weird, right?

This entire industry existed because of a firm belief that free markets were bad and anything produced anywhere else was a threat to our way of life. That life was essentially being a vassal state of Britain. 

In this pre-global context, our tiny nation that lacked the industrial size and capabilities to create world class products nevertheless housed many curious manufacturing sectors. 

These were not organic developments, automotive manufacturing was an especially odd fit, but by virtue of government intervention they thrived by being the only slightly affordable options available to most kiwis. 

This was an age where people seriously believed the Soviet Union could compete with the United States. New Zealand hedged its bet by being staunchly anti-communist yet adhering to a similarly highly regulated economy and reliance on a ‘fatherland’ major trading partner to make it all better. 

Moldova had Daddy Russia, we, as the Moldova of the Commonwealth, had Daddy Britain. 

In the 1980’s, due to a complex combination of parental abandonment, the decay of the British ‘no longer-empire', and the inherent unsustainable nature of a tiny geographically isolated nation relying on a single trading partner on the other side of the world, all of this changed. 

New Zealand, and its economy that was essentially an ouroboros, faced near certain bankruptcy. Very much with a forced hand, we began down the path of deregulation and taking our destiny in our own hands. 

It was the 1980’s and job losses, particularly amongst low skill roles, would combine with newly opening markets to slowly create the high income, fairly high skill economy we have today. 

It wasn't an easy process, and in the short term it disproportionately hit the lower classes hardest, but we eventually created the modern free market economy we have today. One that regularly ranks as the easiest nation in the world to do business in. 

In one of my trademark hard cuts, like the literary Tony Scott that I am, we now turn to 2024 and two industries that seek a return to a Human Centipede-like market structure. 

Yesterday New Zealand fashion industry lobbying group Mindful Fashion (terrible name BTW) chairperson Juliette Hogan, in an interview with Newshub, called for “a levy on garments coming into the [local] market [from overseas].” 

She expanded by saying, “what we really need is someone [the government] to take us under their wing and fight for us.”

Fight for us being a euphemism for a return to the 1970’s, for ‘make our foreign rivals so weighed down by tariffs and other market interventions that kiwis have no choice but to buy only our products’. 

In the same article, Tim Deane, owner of Norsewear, a company that uses top-end knitting machines to make merino socks is quoted as saying, "It's almost impossible for me to find any technical courses that can be used to up-skill [staff]."

These two business leaders, in arguably the easiest country to do business in, want tariffs and a publicly-funded education system designed solely to up-skill workers to the point that they could compete with third world nations without either.   

It is a tacit acknowledgement that they can't compete in a fair fight and now need their opponents taken out. Like Tonya Harding had done to Nancy Kerrigan, they want Christopher Luxon to go for the ankles of their rivals with the metaphorical crowbar. 

This, like the life story of Tonya Harding post-Olympics, would not go as they have envisioned it. 

Levies would not encourage people to buy local fashion, but it would damage consumer spending and jobs that rely on it. 

As would happen if we tried to reignite the early 20th century automotive manufacturing industry, it would not help them but hamstring them by making the entire nation of consumers poorer. 

People buying from Temu or, critically, The Warehouse would not all of sudden be rich enough to avoid fast fashion. Instead they would be priced out of buying new clothing completely. 

Working class families already struggling would send their kids to school in rags, and anyone relying on either a paycheck from The Warehouse or on one of the many charities supported by the Tindall Foundation would be hit the hardest. 

It would be upper class welfare at the expense of our poorest communities. It also wouldn’t flow back into the charitable sector - one where the Tindall family are considered the gold standard of philanthropists, and where both Hogan and Deane are nonentities. 

Whether Roger Douglas is a hero or a villain, and whether the reforms of the Douglas era went too far or not far enough, is academic at this point. The reality of trying to shut off free markets after they are rolling, as the awkwardly named Mindful Fashion are possibly unintentionally seeking, would not be a smooth or victimless process. 

Is the New Zealand fashion industry worth ‘saving’, not at so great a cost. To do so would be unfair, a rejection of history and a contradiction of the newish economy we adopted when the old ways almost ruined us. 

Mindful Fashion may not see this, but the rest of us do, and any government who paid them any mind would face the kind of consequences Hogan et al seek to avoid.

Democracy is a free market too.