En route to this year’s G7+ Summit in the UK, Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison yesterday delivered a speech in Perth on “A world order that favours freedom”.
He spoke of “Australia’s preparedness to withstand economic coercion in recent times”. As “the most practical way to address economic coercion”, he called for reform of the World Trade Organization, particularly “the restoration of the global trading body’s binding dispute settlement system”.
It wasn’t hard to work out what – and who – he was talking about: China.
But Morrison faces a conundrum in his pitch to reform the WTO to resolve trade disputes with China, which has blocked or restricted Australian exports of beef, wheat, lobster, timber and coal, and imposed high tariffs on barley and wine.