She angered China, but was that all Jacinda Ardern’s US trip achieved?
As the dust settles on Jacinda Ardern’s high-profile visit to the United States – arguably the most important foreign trip of her premiership – the New Zealand Prime Minister will have to accept any hope she had harboured that she’d return with the political winds at her back have not been realised.
For all the high profile the trip offered and the positive media reports it generated, no clear political dividends from the trip have yet accrued for her.
Initially framed as a trade mission and anchored by an invitation to deliver the prestigious commencement speech at Harvard University, the visit’s pressing concern at the outset was to demonstrate that NZ had reopened for business, and was a great place for American tourists and investment dollars.
Ultimately, however, it was geopolitics in the form of Indo-Pacific regional competition that emerged most prominently, with China’s increasingly assertive policy in the South Pacific and NZ’s attitude towards it following Ardern home.
China’s regional intentions – especially within NZ’s near neighbourhood – was always going to be discussed when Ardern and US President Joe Biden met in the White House at the tail end of her visit. NZ fell into lock-step with the US with their formal joint statement after the meeting registering concern that some Chinese action in the wider South Pacific was unconducive to regional stability.
The statement triggered a furious response from Beijing, with China’s ambassador to NZ issuing a warning over trade, while the country’s foreign ministry spokesman
denounced Ardern for joining an American “disinformation” campaign to “discredit China.”
Ardern’s own formal statement on the meeting, however, did not mention China at all. While that conforms to NZ’s traditional independent foreign policy and its mindset of hedging its relationship with the two superpowers, it does muddy the waters.
Ardern is now facing calls to prove that the South Pacific is indeed the foreign policy priority she often claims it to be. Her foreign minister Nanaia Mahuta is under increasing scrutiny over her near invisibility in the South Pacific. Mahuta’s halting in-person engagement in the region, which she has visited just once since becoming foreign minister in 2020 – and then only to Fiji – has become a new sore point for the government.
New Zealand First leader Winston Peters, who as Ardern’s foreign minister in her first Coalition government re-orientated much of NZ’s foreign policy towards the South Pacific contends Mahuta has carelessly turned her back on the region to the detriment of NZ’s vital interests.
Critics have compared NZ’s placid approach to the region with Australia’s more proactive moves. Anthony Albanese’s pledge to be more present in the region and the early dispatching of foreign minister Penny Wong to the Fiji is fuelling perceptions in NZ that both Ardern and Mahuta are falling behind in their responsibilities. All talk, no action is the overarching message from critics.
China’s aggressive ambitions aside, Ardern’s American moment will soon fade from view as NZ attention turns once more to pressing domestic challenges, particularly the ongoing cost of living crisis and the economic squeeze. These are the sort of conditions that can make any country ripe for political change.
The trip, therefore, might not serve as the political circuit breaker Ardern needs to alter her fortunes. Last month’s polling showed public support for the Labour Party ebbing against a centre-right National Party, although Ardern remains the country’s most popular politician.
But there were wins in the US trip: Ardern carefully mixed candour with tact in promoting NZ’s values and highlighting her government’s policy achievement. She showed sound diplomatic skills in dipping into especially divisive political topics without alienating or displeasing her American audience. This included pandemic management, climate action, online disinformation, decriminalising abortion and gun control.
The trip also succeeded in securing a number of key deliverables. Commercial deals were inked, such as various West Coast tech investments and agreements, and partnerships were agreed including a climate change pact with California, which could boost NZ’s national electric vehicle fleet.
Ardern also succeeded in strengthening economic ties; NZ’s hope for a free trade deal with the US edged closer after it followed Australia in signing the Biden administration’s Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity.
In the end, Ardern’s aims were largely realised and the NZ-US bilateral relationship is better off for it. But the shine is now starting to rub off the high-profile visit and the one big issue that chased her home from Washington – how to deal with China’s expanding footprint in the South Pacific – has exposed her government to criticism that shows no sign of dying down.
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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