Trade Between Australia and China

Many products we use today are made in China. Trade between Australia and China has heightened in the last couple of years. China has one of the world’s largest economies. It has an increasing role in shaping the world economy, accounting for a third of the increase in the world’s gross domestic product and imports for the period 2000 to 2003 (The Economist 2004). It is also home to a population of 1.3 billion inhabitants, consuming a variety of goods from food items to luxury commodities, toys, clothing, gifts, most car parts and many more things Australia benefits from. For non-agricultural goods, Australian import tariffs are generally low. The most notable exceptions are on motor vehicles and textiles, clothing and footwear imports. However, Australia has undertaken to unilaterally reduce these tariffs over time, with tariffs on motor vehicles, textiles and footwear scheduled to decline to 5 per cent by 2010, while tariffs on clothing will be reduced to 10 per cent by 2010 and to 5 per cent by 2015. Product safety and quality are serious matters to australia, that must be addressed quickly and transparently to maintain consumer confidence. It is important to pursue a fact-based assessment of the issue to ensure accurate understanding of the problems and address them with the appropriate solutions. Most of these problems include, the safety of the workers in china and the heatlh issues raised about the cheap chinese goods that come from china to australia. .

Australia has good political and economic relations with both China and Japan, neither of which wish to exclude Australia from a regional trading community. In most cases, Australian Companies do not own these factories. Australian and multinational companies pay the factories to make products for Australia. From tiny boutiques to multinational corporations such as ford motor, companies compete in the global marketplace by reducing costs -- and that usually means outsourcing manufacturing to China. Since

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