June 29, 2021-Australia requested dispute consultations in the World Trade Organization with China this week over its wine imports. Specifically, Australia is challenging China’s anti-dumping and countervailing measures on imports of Australian wine. The WTO is the world’s largest body for settling trade disputes.
According to a Reuters news story published in the Spring, Australian wine exports from AU$325 million in the final quarter of 2019 to AU$12 million in December of 2020. The agreements cited are the WTO’s Anti-Dumping Agreement, the Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures, and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade 1994.
China-Australia Trade Competition
The wine sales appear to be just the latest issue in a list of disputes between the two countries. Earlier this month, Australia called on G7 countries to reform the WTO and allow the organization’s appeals process to restart work. The WTO appellate body had stopped its work after Former U.S. President Donald Trump refused to name new judges.
As a result, G7 leaders included the following support for WTO reforms at its June 2021 meeting:
“We stand united in our commitment to free and fair trade as foundational principles and objectives of the rules-based multilateral system. We agree on the need for the world’s leading democratic nations to unite behind a shared vision to ensure the multilateral trading system is reformed, with a modernized rulebook and a reformed World Trade Organization (WTO) at its center, to be free and fair for all, more sustainable, resilient and responsive to the needs of global citizens.”
For more information, see the World Trade Organization release.
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