Jacinda Ardern’s US trip crucial for her leadership, but is no quick fix
Later this month New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern travels to Washington for what will be one of the most important – if not the most important – foreign trips of her political career.
After her Covid positive diagnosis on the weekend, Ardern’s foreign affairs officials and her close advisers will be desperately hoping she makes the plane. As NZ quickens its re-entry onto the world stage and reopens for business, the Prime Minister will arrive in the world’s most powerful nation at a time of unusual uncertainty for NZ in an international context and also for herself from a domestic political perspective.
There is no herd immunity against the toxic geopolitical environment at present and the disruptive global forces of Covid, the Ukraine conflict and growing nationalism have reached all the way to NZ.
Add the simmering US-China tension in the Indo-Pacific region and NZ’s national interests have been put under considerable pressure. The country is highly influenced by the behaviour of others and despite its much touted independent foreign policy, it relies heavily on a stable international order – which we don’t have.
Pressing concerns are forming at home as well for Ardern. While her international star wattage still burns fairly bright, her domestic popularity is dimming. This is unfamiliar ground for Ardern, who has long enjoyed the warm embrace of voters.
As the country reckons with rocketing cost of living and annual inflation at 30-year high, Ardern’s governing Labour Party is bearing the brunt of public disquiet. Latest polling suggests a growing public tilt towards the centre-right National Party under its new leader and former Air New Zealand CEO, Christopher Luxon.
As Labour falls behind National in the polls, Ardern suffers too. Though her leadership during the March anti-mandate occupation of parliament grounds and actions in aspects of her pandemic strategy have come under scrutiny, she remains the country’s preferred prime minister in polling. But Luxon is rapidly gaining ground, and is ably positioning himself and his party as viable governing options.
The bottom line is that Ardern has never been this unpopular in her premiership, whereas Luxon is giving the best showing for a National Party leader in over five years. The country’s next election must be held before January 2024, so Ardern has time to restore confidence. Yet, she has never faced headwinds like this before.
The US visit will certainly not provide Ardern with a quick fix to her international and domestic concerns. It will, however, allow to her the chance to improve New Zealand’s national interest and her own political standing.
Little is known of her official US visit program with details typically not revealed until closer to travel time. However officials will be focused on meetings with President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. Seeing congressional leaders and captains of industry will also surely by planned.
The Biden meeting is most valuable for Ardern. It will also burnish her public credentials as a global leader, which could translate well back home. Being feted as brand new global player helped sustain much her early popularity in New Zealand and her political team will want to revive this for domestic gain.
Helpful too will be the optics of comparative age. The image of Joe Biden, the oldest US president to hold that post, next to the much younger Ardern will be a powerful reminder that she represents the next generation of leadership.
During and after the trip, Team Ardern will want to positioning her as a serious and assured actor on the world stage and political newcomer Chris Luxton as merely an inexperienced and nervous understudy.
While not yet confirmed by Wellington, Ardern’s time in the US is expected to include a detour to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she has been named as the latest Commencement Speaker at Harvard University. In American circles, this is considered a high honour and prominent platform on which to speak. Past speakers at Harvard’s graduation ceremony have included former German chancellor Angela Merkel, and the late Civil Rights icon and US congressman John Lewis. Ardern would be the 17th sitting world leader to give the address.
The event could present a post-political opportunity for Ardern – an audition of sorts for a future leading role in the international community. There has been some speculation that Ardern might in time wish to follow the path set by former Labour prime minister Helen Clark, who led the United Nations Development Programme from 2009 to 2017.
Ardern’s US trip has been framed as a trade mission, and economic matters will loom large in public and private dialogue. She will likely reiterate to anyone in earshot her wish for greater US economic engagement in the Indo-Pacific region.
Her visit may well coincide with the anticipated unveiling of the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework – the Biden administration’s signature economic and trade co-operation initiative for the region. Recent visits to New Zealand by US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and Kurt Campbell, White House Coordinator for Indo-Pacific Affairs in the National Security Council, have touched on the IPEF. But Ardern will press her counterpart for more detail about the initiative in practice.
She will also reinforce NZ’s belief in the multilateral trade agenda, and the institutions and rules that govern it. But convincing an American course correction on free trade will be hard going.
Other regional interests will loom large during the US visit. Near the top of the list will be China’s role in the Indo-Pacific, especially in light of Beijing’s recent security deal with the Solomon Islands.
New Zealand is often caught in the middle of the tense power dynamic between Washington and Beijing, with China being a key trading partner and the US acting – in reality – as its security guarantor and sharer of core values.
Ardern may face some pressure in Washington to bend NZ’s thinking on China policy. But she will likely stick to her hedging position between China and the US – a hallmark of modern NZ diplomacy.
Other topics Ardern could seek to publicly survey in the US might include: Promoting her government’s Covid strategy throughout the pandemic, positioning NZ as a key driver in global action on climate change, talking up NZ’s response to the Ukraine war and referencing ‘The Christchurch Call’, which voluntarily commits governments and tech companies to eliminating terrorist and violent extremist content online. Biden’s White House supported the ‘Call’ last May and after the weekend’s shooting in Buffalo, New York, which has been declared a racist hate crime, she may feel the time is right to bring it up again.
Like any visiting prime minister, Ardern and her team will look to leverage the US trip for all its worth and that is only fair. What the outcomes will be for New Zealand’s wider challenges and Ardern’s own narrow political interests will remain to be seen.
Craig Greaves is a freelance writer who spent nearly a decade working for the US State Department advising on NZ foreign policy and NZ politics.
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