Their track record with international negotiations thus far is actually pretty good.
Well if that's your focus, but I'm more worried about the bum deals we're getting from the Liberal negotiation skills, or lack thereof really. I'll be surprised if JAFTA is any better than the below KAFTA crapola deal.
The Korea FTA takes
15 years to remove beef and white sugar tariffs. Canned fruit exports take
5 to 10 years to have their tariffs fully removed. Rice, honey apples and pears and condensed milk (up to 250% tariff)
were excluded from the deal. High tariffs of 36 per cent on cheese and 89 per cent on butter will be eliminated between
13 and 20 years. Korea will eliminate its 22.5 per cent tariff on all sheep and goat meat over
10 years. Tariffs on key pork exports of 22.5 to 25 per cent will be eliminated in
five to 15 years. Korea will provide a growing duty-free quota for malt and malting barley and eliminate high out-of-quota tariffs of 269 and 513 per cent
over 15 years.
88 per cent of Australia’s manufactures, resources and energy exports will enter Korea duty free, with Korea phasing out all remaining tariffs
within ten years;
86 per cent of Korea’s manufacturing, resources and energy exports will enter Australia duty free, with Australia phasing out remaining tariffs for the most import-sensitive manufacturing products progressively within
eight years.
Why does it take 2 years longer for Australia to get the same benefits as Korea?
They also included ISDS within the FTA, claiming some safe guards that have so far proved ineffective in other FTAs.
The most disturbing part of the FTA is that should Australian agricultural exports increase by more than 2% in any year, yes
2%, then the Koreans can unilaterally reimpose higher tariffs. Seriously, what's the point of the FTA when if it does actually start to benefit us the Korea can just backtrack on any tariff reductions?? No such clause for Australian imports seems to have been included.
Korea received IMMEDIATE removal of tariffs on cars and electronics.
The ACCI has come out today and said
"…unless technical elements of the Korean deal are redrafted before it is formally ratified, it will become *“unworkable in a commercial sense”, as will the Japanese deal if its compliance clauses are not drafted in a business-friendly way…"
In a different survey of companies Asia-wide cited by the chamber, fewer than 30 per cent of the firms responding used the concessions available to them under FTAs. Large transnational companies love FTAs because they have the resources to take advantage of them, but the smaller companies in Australia find the costs involved too high to make it worth their while. besides BHP and RIO, whcih I'd argue aren't really Australian companies, just how many transational companies do we have that can benefit from these FTAs and their noodle like complexity of different ROOs and quotas.