New Zealand is in better shape than most to survive the rest of Donald Trump’s presidency. The reason is not goodwill in Washington. It is the boring, structural work of selling to a lot of countries at once, and the next government should double down on it.
That is the useful reading of US foreign policy expert Zach Cooper’s assessment, reported by Newsroom this week, that New Zealand is relatively well placed to weather the final Trump years. Cooper’s advice is to make progress with the US where possible while being realistic about what cannot be changed. Even seasoned American analysts admit they struggle to predict Trump’s decisions. If they can’t, a mid-sized Pacific trading nation should not plan around special treatment.
Reassurance did not stop the tariffs
Wellington has tried the warm-words approach. In April 2025, then-Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said New Zealand was “incredibly well-positioned” to handle the tariff storm, noting the 10% rate was far below Vietnam’s 46% and China’s 34%, and rebutting Trump’s claim that New Zealand charged 20% on US goods.
It did not help much. By August 2025 the rate had risen to 15%, leaving New Zealand behind Australia’s 10%. Then-Finance Minister Nicola Willis relayed that the White House told New Zealand’s trade envoy “there was nothing personal about this decision”. That was the most honest line in the whole episode. The tariff was a formula applied to a trade surplus. No amount of charm was going to reverse a spreadsheet.
The data showed real damage
MFAT’s own 2025 assessment put numbers on it. Exporters front-loaded shipments, with growth to the US of 19.6% in March and 21.9% in April 2025. Once the tariffs landed, exports fell 3.0% year-on-year in the first full quarter, including an 8.9% drop in June, before a partial rebound in July. Meat, 29.1% of US-bound exports in 2024, followed the same surge-then-slump pattern.
The stakes were not small. Stats NZ reported in early 2025 that the US had become New Zealand’s second largest export market at $9.0 billion, or 12% of goods exports, with meat at $2.6 billion and wine at $702 million. Beef and wine exporters cannot simply walk away from that.
Yet the 2025 coverage also showed the private sector adapting faster than the diplomats. 1News reported that US demand for New Zealand meat stayed strong, that companies were already exploring alternative markets, and that services exports sat entirely outside the goods tariffs. That is what “well placed” actually looks like.
Two pressures that won’t go away
In May, US foreign policy expert Charles Edel told Newsroom that Trump’s “fast and furious” style is designed to overwhelm, and that allies will keep being judged on two metrics, the bilateral trade balance and defence spending as a share of GDP. Crucially, Edel expects tariffs tied to strategic competition with China to outlast Trump, whoever wins next.
That should reset business planning. Some of this is not a four-year weather event. It is the new climate.
The defence point deserves honesty rather than wounded pride. Back in 2025, Leon Grice, a former consul general in Los Angeles, said the US was “a big supertanker that doesn’t turn easily” and warned against catastrophising, but also conceded that greater defence investment was the right thing to do after decades of underspending. Paying for our own security is not capitulation. It is overdue.
Don’t overpay for a handshake
The real danger is chasing a bilateral deal for comfort. In 2025, analysis in The Conversation warned that larger economies striking deals with the Trump administration paid a high political price with no durable guarantees. A January 2026 piece argued New Zealand’s edge lies in a world of “multiplexity”, keeping working relationships with both Washington and Beijing rather than betting on either.
For a free-trading economy, that is the right instinct. Concessions handed over for a deal that can be torn up by a late-night post are a bad trade.
What exporters should assume now
Treat US tariffs as a cost of doing business, not a misunderstanding awaiting correction. Price them in, protect margins in the US where the brand premium holds, and keep building alternatives in Asia, Europe and India. Lean into services, which tariffs can’t reach.
For the next government, the job is clear. Bank the wins that are genuinely available, accept that defence and trade-balance demands are the price of the relationship, and spend political capital on multilateral access rather than a Washington charm offensive. New Zealand is well placed precisely because it never needed the US to like it. The next three years are a good time to keep it that way.
Sources
- Newsroom: NZ well placed to weather final Trump years, US expert says (2026-10-21)
- RNZ: New Zealand ‘incredibly well-positioned’ to weather tariff storm, Christopher Luxon (2025-04-07)
- 1News: ‘It’s not personal’: What White House told NZ’s trade envoy on tariffs (2025-08-22)
- MFAT: US tariff 10 percent assessment April 2025 (2025-08)
- Stats NZ: US now New Zealand’s second largest export partner (2025-01-30)
- Newsroom: Trump’s ‘fast and furious’ approach places new pressure on NZ, expert (2026-05-15)
- Newsroom: Ex-diplomat: NZ shouldn’t ‘catastrophise’ over Trump (2025-02-12)
- The Conversation: NZ is looking for a deal over Trump’s new tariffs, that could come with a high political price (2025-08-03)
- The Conversation: How NZ can survive, and even thrive, in Trump’s new world of great-power rivalry (2026-01-20)
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