Supercharging CER?

CER turned 40 last year and should be celebrated. It has set the standard as the world's best practice for a free trade agreement – it has been an outrageous success.

This paper is the second in a series of four trade-focused papers celebrating CER and asking the question: where next? The question has taken on much more significance over the last few years, given the anti-trade rhetoric from the United States and heightened by the United States elections.

The first paper in the series, The good, the bad, and the ugly: A decisive election for trade, or is the writing already on the wall?  NZIER Insight 116, considers the impact of the US election on trade policy. Two further papers will look at the prospects of CER in ASEAN and beyond, what it might be worth for New Zealand (paper 3), and the prospects for paperless (paper 4).