China-Australia relations: consumers pockets on both sides will foot the bill for ‘trade battle’, expert says
- Australia has taken its dispute over China’s anti-dumping duties imposed on its barley to the World Trade Organization, but the issue could still take years to resolve
- But importers and consumers in China and Australia will be the ones who ultimately suffer, according to Bryan Mercurio, a professor of law at the Chinese University of Hong Kong
Relations between China and Australia have become fraught over the past year after Canberra pushed for an international probe into the origin of the coronavirus without diplomatic consultations beforehand, and Beijing eventually responded with a number of trade blocks on wine, barley, cotton, copper, coal, sugar and lobsters. We look at the issues in this series.
Everyday consumers and traders in China and Australia will ultimately pay the price of the political conflict between the two countries, even if the World Trade Organization (WTO) steps in to arbitrate the trade disruptions triggered by the tensions, according to a leading international trade expert.
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Trade ‘only one part of the battle‘ in China-Australia dispute, says legal expert Bryan Mercurio