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AUSTRALIA’S NEW PRIME MINISTER CALLS ON CHINA TO LIFT PUNITIVE TARIFFS

By Siulan Law Mathews DipWSET

25-5-2022



Source: Anthony Albanese/Facebook

Australia’s new Prime Minister Anthony Albanese calls on China to remove the punitive tariffs imposed on Australian goods, including wines, because there is “no justification” for the sanctions.

Albanese told a press conference at the Quad Leaders’ Summit in Tokyo yesterday that it is important for China to lifting the trade sanctions if it wants to reset the Australia-China bilateral relationship that has plunged new lows under the previous administration.

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang sent a congratulatory letter to Albanese on his election victory, Li said in the letter that China was ready to work with Australia to develop the bilateral relationship. This was widely seen as a relaxation of Beijing’s two-year ban on high-level government contact with Australia.

China has imposed a series of trade barriers in the past years on Australian imports worth billions of dollars including wine, coal, barley, beef and seafood in response to former Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s comments that China should be investigated for the origin of the COVID-19 virus.

The anti-dumping tariffs China imposed on Australian wines are as high as 218 percent, some 97 percent of Australia’s wine exports to China has been wiped out since its application.

“There is no justification for doing that and that’s why they should be removed,” Albanese said in his first foreign visit as Australian Prime Minister in Tokyo.

Australia’s new Treasurer Jim Chalmers also called on China to immediately lift the trade barriers.

“We would certainly like to see those sanctions and those tariffs lifted. They are damaging our economy. They are making life harder for some of our employers and workers here in Australia and so obviously we would like to see those measures lifted,” Chalmers said.

The Morrison government had initiated a dispute over the tariffs with the World Trade Organisation (WTO), which has appointed three panellists to adjudicate the matter.

The Australian wine industry said they are confident about the outcome, but WTO dispute procedures normally take years, a quick diplomatic solution may serve the industry’s interests better than the WTO path.

(the writer can be contacted at: info@thewinechronicle.com)

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