PACER-Plus is a trade agreement that involves Australia, New Zealand, and a handful of small Island nations

In the New Zealand parliament, Green MP Golriz Ghahraman has raised concerns about the impact of a new trade agreement on small islands She says “PACER-Plus is a trade agreement that involves Australia, New Zealand, and a handful of small Island nations. It's 16 years in the making. It's designed to have those countries drop tariffs on most goods being imported from Australia and New Zealand and for them to rewrite their regulations for us to much more easily pressure them into privatizing their core State-owned enterprises, for deregulation, for them to drop policies that would protect domestic innovation, and to make it harder, or impossible, for those nations to trade with countries outside of the zone. It's very difficult to see what benefit there is to the Island nations signing on to this agreement.”