Rebuilding Trade: Toward domestic and international consensus

The Hinrich Foundation and the New Zealand High Commission to Singapore co-organized a roundtable discussion on 7 October, headlined by Vangelis Vitalis, Deputy Secretary, Trade and Economic, at the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. The roundtable explored the many challenges facing the global trading order, including the bedrock principle of decision-making by consensus at the World Trade Organization, Chuin Wei Yap, the Foundation’s research director, moderated the discussion.

Mr. Vitalis rides a storied career as New Zealand’s Chief Negotiator who led the conclusion of negotiations for the New Zealand European Union Free Trade Agreement (EUNZFTA), the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), the ASEAN-Australia-New Zealand Free Trade Agreement (AANZFTA), and the Malaysia-New Zealand Free Trade Agreement (MNZFTA). He was also a member of the negotiating teams for the New Zealand-China FTA and the P4 Agreement.

Prior to taking up his role in Wellington in 2017, Mr. Vitalis was New Zealand’s Permanent Representative to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in Geneva where he chaired ground-breaking agriculture negotiations and helped draft the text of the historic Nairobi WTO Ministerial Decision to eliminate agricultural export subsidies. He has also held ambassadorial positions for New Zealand to the European Union, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and has had postings to Canberra and Moscow.

Mr. Vitalis, who has a reputation in trade policy circles as a creative thinker in problem-solving, helped design and implement the advancement of New Zealand's strategy of concerted open plurilateralism, including through the conclusion and expansion of the Digital Economy Partnership Agreement, the Agreement on Climate Change and Sustainable Development and the Indigenous Peoples’ Economic Cooperation and Trade Arrangement.

At the closed-door roundtable last week, he spoke to guests from the Singapore Ministry of Trade and Industry, the High Commissions of Australia and Canada to Singapore, the EU Delegation to Singapore, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Policy Support Unit, the Singapore Business Federation, Singapore’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Control Risks, Visa, and ANZ Bank.

Mr. Vitalis addressed and engaged the roundtable’s guests for nearly three hours on key policy issues including how to rebuild international consensus, repairing multilateralism, the advantages of small economies, the inventiveness needed to beat back non-tariff barriers, US-China relations, e-commerce, agricultural policy reform, fisheries subsidies.

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