When COVID hit New Zealand what I thought seemed like a good idea was if we here in New Zealand and others in other countries did was isolate ourselves from the rest of the world to stop COVID, but also to reinvent our country. I was very disappointed that the Labour Party did not do this.

My thoughts are that we are so heavily dependent on other countries that we allow our country to keep going further in to debt and also our dependency on others leads to weakness in invention and repair here in our own country.

If we were isolated for say, about 4-5 years, we would have to make our own food, make our own products, rely on each other for supplies, help and so on, and people would have been more important than the dollar, and New Zealanders would be looking after each other.

When a political party in power is more worried about the next election and getting votes it does more pandering to the public and is too scared to take risks and have a go if they think an idea is worth trying, for the greater good of the country and people.

Back in the past a political party removed the Tariffs, of such things like cars, and our entire car industry died due to the cheap Japanese imports and other dubious vehicles coming in to the country at very low prices. With the NZ car companies plants shutting down many jobs were lost.

It occurs to me that what Trump is doing is forcing their separation from the rest of the world in many ways, and then reversing what they did in New Zealand. It seems that he is causing the USA to make their own goods and learn to rely on themselves all over again without other countries ruling over the USA with trade demands and such.

In such a situation jobs will be created, unemployment will go down, food will be healthier, and the people will become more competitive with each other, more inventions made, and a healthy business sector created. This seems to be the idea, and whether it works or not is yet to be seen.

Politicians in other countries who refuse to start their own Doge Departments are obviously wanting the status quo to continue. But one must wonder, where is all our tax payers money going in New Zealand? And how much are the politicians keeping for themselves, and how many business loopholes in existence here, and fake companies and such. If that kind of crime can so easily be put together in the USA it can be created anywhere as long as their are greedy politicians willing to feather their own nests from misuse of the taxpayers money.

If Tariffs were brought back and were high here in New Zealand then yes, prices would be higher, and yes we would not get all that Chinese stuff, but we will have more jobs, more invention, more companies, and our land would be our own and our companies would not be sold off to foreign countries and so on.

James M Sandbrook.