ISDS Case Map
Australia
Unions have given Labor the go ahead to negotiate a free trade deal with China after the ALP agreed to address fears about potential job losses in Australia.
The Australian Manufacturing Workers Union's analysis of a potential free trade agreement between Australia and China predicts around 170,000 job losses in manufacturing if the agreement goes ahead. Since implementing previous agreements with the US, Thailand and Singapore, AMWU says an estimated 26,000 jobs have been lost as a result, almost all in the manufacturing sector.
Japan and Australia have agreed to a fast-paced timetable of negotiations on a free trade pact after two days of initial talks.
Two trade ministers from Asia-Pacific nations -- Singapore and Australia -- on Saturday defended bilateral and regional trade agreements as potentially contributing to, not detracting from, the global trade regime.
Countries will continue to negotiate their own free trade agreements in the absence of a WTO deal, but those bilateral arrangements could actually help the chances for a global trade pact, Australia's trade minister said Saturday.
Twenty months after the free trade agreement with the United States was
signed, what have been the outcomes for Australia? Professor John Mathews
from the graduate school of management at Macquarie University provides an
update.
The US-Korea Free Trade Agreement will allow the US greater access to one of Australian beef's premier export markets.
The international trade tide is turning in a dangerous direction for Australia.
The new deal carved out by the US and South Korea last week, just minutes before President George Bush's trade negotiating powers expired, is a massive one.
Australia's free trade agreement talks with China concluded their eighth round in Beijing with little progress, despite many "technically useful" discussions.
The Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement between Sri Lanka and Australia came into force with effect from March 14 with the completion by the Australian authorities of its domestic procedures for the entry into force of the Agreement.
