The super-power contest is heating up. Negotiations for a competing mega-FTA between 10 ASEAN countries and China, India, Korea, Japan, Australia and New Zealand have just been launched. China is in and the US is not! NZ wants to keep a foot in each camp. Trade Minister Tim Groser is putting his eggs in the TPPA basket, but states ‘if TPP were to start to weaken, and we will fight that as hard as we can, my theory would be that [the ASEAN+6] FTA will help us’. China, which it is hosting APEC in 2014, will have different ideas.
