Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León

Facultad de Ciencias Políticas y Relaciones

Internacionales.

Unit of Learning: Diplomacy

LEARNING INTEGRATIVE PRODUCT

Position Paper: Australia in the TPP-11

Professor: Walid Tijerina

MELISSA ALEJANDRA CASTELLANOS CONSTANTINO 1887579

LEOPOLDO DAVALOS AYALA 1798642

DANIEL DAVILA RANGEL 1801830

PATRICIO VILLAREAL URESTI 1808890

Shift: Morning

Classroom: C01

Group: BC4

Monterrey, Nuevo León, Friday May 10, 2019

Office: Economic and Social Council

(ECOSOC)

Country: Australia

Debate subject: Australia’s Posture

to the TPP

School: UANL Faculty of Political Science and International Relations

Delegates: Melissa Alejandra Castellanos Constantino, Daniel Dávila Rangel,

Leopoldo Dávalos Ayala, Patricio Villarreal Uresti

Introduction

According with (Diplomatic Information Bureau, 2019) Australia is a country located

on the oceanic continent with territory is located at east Pacific Ocean. It has

7.692.024 km2. of territory and it’s on the south hemisphere, near the Spain

antipodes, which are on New Zeland. Australia has been considerate as the flatter

continent on the earth. Its average height is 300 m above sea level. Thanks to the

Nullabor plain, on the south of the country they have more than 483 kilometers of

railway line. The Australian continent has three regions, the Western Plateau,

Central Plains and Eastern Highlands.

Australia’s capital is Canberra, that has a population of 410.000 habitants. Other

important cities are Sidney and Melbourne. Because of its antecedents as a British

colony, Australia’s main language is English. However, by 2016 there was registered

data stating that most of the Australians can speak a different language than English
at home (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2016). The most popular languages,

besides English are Mandarin, Arabic, Cantonese, Vietnamese, Italian and Greek.

“Australian culture is as broad and varied as the country's landscape.

Australia is multicultural and multiracial, and this is reflected in the country's

food, lifestyle and cultural practices and experience” (Australian Government,

2019).

Australia belongs to the OCDE it is member of the Commonwealth, and several

regional organizations, the ones it helps to work actively. This is the case of the

APEC which summit hosted on 2007, also the Regional Forum ASEAN as well as

the Eastern Asia Summit (Anonimo, 2015).

Australia’s government is a representative democracy, which means that it has a

parliamentarian government, in this case, the citizens can participate and provide

their own opinions (Commonwealth Secretariat, 2019). Today, as Australia is part of

the Commonwealth, even when Australia is an independent nation, the queen of

England, Queen Elizabeth II, is also considerate officially as Queen of Australia. In

order to keep their control, the Queen names a Governor – General for him to act as

her representative on the country.

According with (Oficina de Información Diplomática, 2019)Australia is divided into

six states and two federated territories. Its relationship by order of population

(Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2017) is as follows: New South Wales, capital

Sydney: 7.8 million Victoria, capital Melbourne: 6.3 million Queensland, capital

Brisbane: 4.9 million South Australia, capital Adelaide: 1.7 Million western Australia,
capital Perth: 2.5 million Tasmania, capital Hobart: 520,900 territory of the Australian

Capital (Canberra): 410,000 territory of the north, Darwin's capital: 246,000

The Australian economy has been growing at an average of 2.5% in the last two

years. However, the fall in the prices of mining products has continued to have an

impact on this activity, which has been the largest source of income in the country,

although the growth of mining activity in global terms has been maintained. In a way

this means that it has been producing more but the economy has been earning less.

Unemployment stands at 5.5% in 2018, dropping 0.1 points compared to the

previous year (Santander, 2017).

Australia’s Posture to the TPP

Australia has ratified the Trans-Pacific Partnership (tpp-11) trade agreement giving

our farmers access to more markets, greater opportunities for our business, more

jobs, and increased investment, now we joined, Canada, Japan, Mexico, New

Zealand and Singapore as part of the first group to ratify and with this the agreement

entered in force the past December of 2018.(Prime Minister of Australia, 2018)

The TPP-11 is one of the most comprehensive and ambitious trade agreements in

Australia’s history, with this agreement we tried to seek a better opportunity for

national businesses to grow and see annual benefits of up to $15.6 billion to our

national economy by the year 2030 (Commonwealth, 2019)

Prime minister Scott Morrison said, "Australian farmers and businesses will

particularly benefit from new high-quality free trade agreements with Canada and

Mexico, our first ever with these two of the world's top 20 economies."
All this possible thanks to the ex-prime minister Malcolm Turnbull and former trade

minister Steven Ciobo for pushing the TPP trade deal through despite the withdrawal

of the United States at the beginning of 2017, prime minister declared, “Australia is

an open, trading nation.” Meaning that Australia will always be careful of what is

happening in the negotiations of this trade. (Matsumoto 2018)

Australia will not be the only beneficiated from this agreement, for example, the

agreement will provide new access to the Canadian market, for our grain, sugar and

beef exporters. It will open the growing Mexican market for our pork, wheat, sugar,

barley and horticulture producers. The TPP-11 also improves our market access into

Japan for our beef, wheat, barley and dairy exporters beyond the bilateral Japan-

Australia Economic Partnership Agreement

Australian exporters of industrial products such as iron and steel, leather and paper

products and medical equipment, who currently sell $19 billion worth of products to

TPP-11 markets, will be able to grow their businesses without facing a tariff

disadvantage. (Reichert, 2018)

Although the labor party decided to walk away after US walked out, the two other

major parties in the parliament decided to continue supporting this agreement in

order to keep opening new markets for Australian exporters, create certainty for

Australian businesses, strengthen the economy and create more jobs, this was said

by the prime minister of Australia through his webpage, reinforcing the optimism for

the TPP-11 (Prime minister of Australia, 2018)

“The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a big deal for the Australian economy and

will help build on the more than 1,000 jobs a day created in 2017. Securing this big

deal is a great way to start 2018, which is a year of economic opportunity for all

Australians.” Said prime minister Scott Morrison through his twitter account (Straits

times, 2018)

Former Minister for Trade, also showed his position on the trade writing on his twitter

account, “The TPP-11 is one of the most comprehensive trade deals ever concluded

and will provide significant benefits to Australian businesses, farmers and investors”

(Commonwealth, 2019)

Minister Birmingham also showed how this trade would beneficiate Australia market

on the areas they are experts, writing this “Accelerated reductions in Japan’s tariffs

on Australian beef, preferential treatment for products made using Australian wool,

better access for wine exporters and clear investment regimes for mining and

resources, are just some of the benefits we can expect to see flow from the TPP-

11”. The TPP-11 will eliminate more than 98 per cent of tariffs for 11 countries with

a combined GDP of more than $13.8 trillion (AUD) and close to 500 million

consumers. That’s an enormous opportunity for our industries.” (Prime minister of

Australia, 2019)

China entering to the TPP

With the pull out of the U.S to the TPP on 2017, the countries were seriously

considering if staying on the treatment will be a good idea. Australia and some other
countries were aiming to keep the ratification of the TPP even whit the U.S. pull out,

since they would be benefited by this success (Farley, 2017).

Now, once the U.S was out of the game, China saw its opportunity to seek for new

allies and benefits on this commercial war they have with the states. At the beginning

this country was excluded from the TPP by their lead administration.

Now, with the new panorama China might try to step in. According with (CGTN,

2018) the aim of the Country is to get more knowledge about the involved powers

and their economic interests in order to understand and then decide if it will be

convenient for them to get in or not to the TPP.

In this case China will need to consider some factors that might be beneficial for

them. With the U.S. out of the picture, the TPP remains without the support of any

big economic powers (Zhou & Wu, 2018). If they join, given their power, the change

of rules to ones that will benefit them the most will be easier. And if we consider that

some of the rules of the TPP were keeping China away, this might result attractive

for this power.

Australian Position to China entering to the TPP

As one of the leaders of the TPP after the pull out of the U.S., our government has

been receptive to the addition of other powers to the treatment. Our Prime Minister

stated at an economic summit in Papua Guinea the following:

“Tit-for-tat protectionism and threats of trade wars are in no one’s interests

economically, and undermine the authority of the global and regional trading

rules that benefit us all,” (Scott & Reynolds, 2018).

This meaning that the best way of getting positive economic relations with other

powers is through well stated treatments, in order to support all of them.

Also, according with (Foster & Doffey, 2018) there are a lot of reasons why China

should join the TPP. An important one is that, by joining this agreement, Chine will

be entering the U.S territory, which they haven’t had access, since it is formerly

considered as dominated by U.S. hegemony. With all the issues and disengagement

that has been coming from the U.S. new administration, the international community

is not very pleased. This gives the perfect opportunity to China to starts developing

their relations in the Western.

Our government supports the entering of China into the TPP, since it will bring a lot

of benefits to it, as well as stability by having the support of one of the main economic

powers in the world. This will increase the opportunities for the treatment to be

successful, bringing as much benefits to our economy as possible.

Bibliography

Anonimo. (10 de Noviembre de 2015). Organismos Regionales De Australia.

Obtenido de
http://oganismosregionalesdaustralia.blogspot.com/2015/11/organismos-
internacionales-y-regionales.html

Australian Bureau of Statistics. ( 2016). Census. Canberra: Australian Government.

Australian Government. (2019). australia.gov. Obtenido de

https://www.australia.gov.au/about-australia/our-country

CGTN. (14 de Noviembre de 2018). Will China join the TPP? CGTN News, pág.
N/A.

Commonwealth Secretariat. (2019). The Commonwealth. Obtenido de

http://thecommonwealth.org/our-member-countries/australia/history
Diplomatic Information Bureau. (2019). Ficha País. Australia. Madrid: Ministerio de
Asuntos Exteriores, Unión Europea y Cooperación.

Farley, K. (2017). US leaves the TPP: implications for the Asian markets. Atradius.

Foster, H., & Doffey, A. (2018). Why China Should Join the Trans-Pacific
Partnership. Australian Institute of International Affairs, N/A.

Matsumoto, F. (2018). Australia approves TPP-11, raises chance of pact taking

effect in early 2019. Asian Review , N/A

Oficina de Información Diplomática. (2019). Ficha País: Australia. Madrid:

Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores, Unión Europea y Cooperación.

Prime Minister of Australia . (2018). Australia Ratifies the TPP-11. Prime Minister
of Australia, N/A.

Reichert, C. (2018). TPP 11 will enter into force in December as Australia ratifies .
ZD NET , N/A.

Santander. (2017). Santander | Trade Portal. Obtenido de

https://es.portal.santandertrade.com/analizar-mercados/australia/economia?

Scott, J., & Reynolds, I. (2018). Australia Leader Slams Trade War, Says Door to
TPP Still Open. Bloomberg, n/a.

STRAITS-TIMES. (2018). Malcolm Turnbull hails revived TPP as critics question

value for Australia . Straits times , N/A
Zhou, L., & Wu, W. (2018). Beijing ‘looking into joining trans-Pacific trade pact’ to
hedge against US. South China Morning Post, N/A.