DUNCAN GARNER RECKONS THE SKY WON'T FALL IN !

Duncan Garner reckons the TPPA will be great for New Zealand. But a new United States study says that it will have little economic benefit for New Zealand and will result in the loss of 6000 jobs over the next decade.

IN AN OPINION PIECE for the Radio Live website Duncan Garner wrote a hymn of praise of the TPPA. The Radio Live presenter and co- host of TV3's Story exclaimed:

"I predict the sky won't fall in. And exporters stand to make billions more in the years ahead. We won't get rich buying and selling to each other - we need barriers broken and global doors open. That's why we must continue to fight for international trade deals knowing there will always be a boisterous but small mob who hate the idea - no matter what the facts"

Garner likes to reckon a lot and he 'reckons' the TPPA will be good for us. Fortunately there are people who think 'reckoning' isn't good enough and, unlike Garner, have done some hard research.

One new study is Trading Down: Unemployment, Inequality and Other Risks of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement by Jeronim Capaldo and Alex Izurieta with Jomo Kwame Sundaram. The study was published last month by the Global development and Environment Institute at Tufts University, near Boston in the United States.

The authors held a press briefing at the National Press Club In Washington on Monday, where they outlined their findings.

The study concludes that the largest economies in the TPP — the U.S. and Japan — will actually shrink as a result of the trade deal, and that the deal would result in fewer jobs overall in all the participating countries including New Zealand.

The study also concludes that theTPPA will lead to employment losses in all countries, with a total of 771,000 lost jobs.

The report says that the TPPA will result in an negligible increase in New Zealand's GDP of 0.77 percent and will result in 6000 job losses and widening social inequality.

But studies like this have largely been ignored by a corporate media determined to smear the opponents of the TPPA.

As ex-New Zealand Herald journalist Dita De Boni has observed:

"The smear campaign against people who oppose the TPPA – or see much to question in it – has almost completely stifled proper debate about this game-changing deal.....The latest attack lines suggest that because the sky hasn't immediately fallen in, the TPPA must be A OK.'

Yesterday on his Radio Live show Duncan Garner was blasting Maori opposition to the TPPA as 'childish'. Maori are presumably also part of Garner's 'boisterous but small mob' who 'hate the idea of international trade deals'.

Shortly before the last election Garner gave the Prime Minister his 'big tick' for his management of the economy.