New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters said on Sunday his country needed the United States as an "active" partner in the Indo-Pacific region, after a trip to Washington last month to bolster ties with the Trump administration. New Zealand and the U.S. have worked together in the Pacific to offset the growing influence of China, but there are concerns among some lawmakers in New Zealand about what the change in administration in Washington and its suspension of aid funding will mean for the region. Speaking in Honolulu, Hawaii, on a week-long Pacific trip by a group of New Zealand politicians, Peters said the message he took to the U.S. was that "New Zealand wants, indeed needs, for the United States to remain an active, engaged and constructive partner in the Indo-Pacific".