Welcome to Eureka Street

back to site

Keywords: Free Trade

  • INTERNATIONAL

    Pandering with pandas: Australia-China relations turn warm and fuzzy

    • Jeremy Clarke
    • 19 June 2024

    In a significant thaw in Sino-Australian relations, Premier Li Qiang's visit to Canberra brought strategic agreements on education, climate change, and trade, and the promise of new pandas for Adelaide Zoo. Prime Minister Albanese emphasised cooperation and dialogue over confrontation, contrasting with the hawkish rhetoric of domestic critics.

    READ MORE
  • ECONOMICS

    Trump's trade attack is off track

    • David James
    • 18 July 2018
    2 Comments

    Trump's destruction of the architecture of international trade agreements and reversion to protectionism will expose the complexity of globalisation, but is unlikely to have the effect he is aiming at, which is to bring investment capital, and jobs, back to his country.

    READ MORE
  • ECONOMICS

    Dispelling lazy thinking on trade deals

    • David James
    • 20 March 2018
    6 Comments

    The recent furore about Donald Trump's imposing of tariffs on steel, from which Australian companies have been exempted, raises an interesting question about the economics discipline. Which is better, an oxymoron or a tautology?

    READ MORE
  • INTERNATIONAL

    Buying exemptions: Donald Trump's tariff deal

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 13 March 2018
    5 Comments

    This affair has done little to encourage Australians keen on pushing a more robustly independent line from Washington. A ceremonial subservience and deference to US power has been exhibited. Such sentiments embrace the inherent inequality of the Australian-US relationship. To be in deficit to the US is seen as a good and necessary thing.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Corporate benefit trumps public welfare in TPP

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 07 October 2015
    3 Comments

    According to WikiLeaks, the Trans-Pacific Partnership is the 'icebreaker agreement' for what will be a 'T-treaty triad' which will ultimately apply to 53 states, 1.6 billion people and two-thirds of the global economy. Each of the countries was being sold the implausible idea that the agreement was too large not to sign, that this was the train of history that needed to be occupied, even if seating was in third class. What was on sale, however, was a dogma of corporate benefit rather than public welfare.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Applaud the collapse of the Trans Pacific Partnership

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 10 August 2015
    15 Comments

    Last week the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) sank without trace. Ordinarily we might lament the failure to reach international agreements. Free trade is a benefit when it serves the common good, especially that of the most vulnerable. But the failure of the TPP is a cause for great joy. It was not about free trade, nor was the process by which it would have been carried through a proper one.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Abe here to spruik his invigorated Japan

    • Walter Hamilton
    • 09 July 2014
    5 Comments

    Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's perspective on modern history would offend most Australians. He sits in the camp that believes Japan fought a defensive war. Abe and Tony Abbott will adopt a series of measures for strengthening joint military exercises, enhance people-to-people exchanges, formally sign a 'free trade' agreement, and much more. A full-course meal that Australians would be advised to chew over well.

    READ MORE
  • INTERNATIONAL

    China syndrome haunts Abbott's Japanese jaunt

    • Walter Hamilton
    • 09 April 2014
    3 Comments

    The two powers in Asia on whom our economy and security depend, Japan and China, have reached an impasse. That should not constrain Australia from reaching out to both on the basis of mutual interest and shared values. China has a keen appreciation of the former and an abiding suspicion of appeals to the latter. Distinguishing one from the other and acting accordingly is the first great test of Abbott's statecraft.

    READ MORE
  • RELIGION

    Is the pope a Marxist?

    • Neil Ormerod
    • 17 December 2013
    27 Comments

    Pope Francis' vision for the church of the poor is now joined to a stinging critique of our globalised economy which promotes a 'new tyranny' of unfettered capitalism and an attack on the 'idolatry of money'. While such language has not been uncommon, buried in the riches of Catholic social teaching, this pope has made it up front and centre stage of his message.

    READ MORE
  • INTERNATIONAL

    Finagling free trade in the Pacific

    • Jemma Williams
    • 16 August 2013
    2 Comments

    Many Pacific Island nations question what they will gain from PACER-Plus, the free trade agreement that is being negotiated this week between these nations, Australia and New Zealand. If Australian and New Zealand really want to achieve development in the Pacific, why are they pushing these islands to reduce their barriers to trade in a manner which could restrict their achievement of human development goals?

    READ MORE
  • INTERNATIONAL

    Best of 2010: Arresting Mexico's borderland femicide

    • Ellena Savage
    • 13 January 2011
    2 Comments

    Some 5000 women have been killed in Juarez since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was signed in 1994. Most are workers who have been tortured and sexually abused. Because of the boost to the economy associated with NAFTA, Mexican media outlets and academics often turn a blind eye. 

    READ MORE
  • INTERNATIONAL

    Arresting Mexico's borderland femicide

    • Ellena Savage
    • 26 May 2010
    6 Comments

    Some 5000 women have been killed in Juarez since the North American Free Trade Agreement was signed in 1994. These women are not 'essential victims'; we do them a favour if we realise their victimhood lies in their abuse, not as a quality they possess for being female and working-class.

    READ MORE