豪州・中国間自由貿易協定の動向とその経済波及効果

Abstract

Formerly Australia has insisted on the global trade liberalization through GA TT and WTO consistently. However, Australia has recently concluded 4 FTAs with New Zealand, Singapore, Thailand and United States so far. Among those, the FTA with United States has been very controversial negotiation and ve1y time consuming during the negotiation process. In this negotiation USA had insisted two stage agreements where agriculture had been excluded from liberalization sectors in the first stage and then agriculture was reconsidered to be included in the second stage after agreement became successful. This was not totally accepted by Australia and also from the international viewpoints of consistency between WTO and FTA. Eventually it was concluded with compromise of Australian side to some extent. Since then, Australia has been negotiating the possibilities of FT A with several countries. Those are FTAs with ASEAN, Malaysia, Arab Espirate Countries Federation, Japan and China. Among them, the FT A which Australia has most strongly intended to conclude is FTA with China. In this articles, the economic impacts on both side of FTA between Australia and China are discussed. At this stage, it is pointed out that both countries would have positive benefits from this agreement and especially Australia has bigger benefits than China in terms of the increase rate of exports and GDP. Australia would expand exports of the mining resources and other primary industries while China would expand textile and labor intensive manufacturing industries. Those situations are quite different from the case of FTA with USA. Recently in Australia, the wool industry has been seriously stagnated while wine industry has been enjoying the booming situations. These situations have expanded the possibilities of intra-industry trade (horizontal division of labor) within agricultural trade between the two countries.