Australian trade, investment & economy

At the upcoming APEC Summit in Beijing, China is hoping to announce a formal MoU for the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). Offers to join the Bank have been sent around the region, including to Australia. So should Australia sign on? Little is publicly known about how the Bank would work

Perhaps the most fundamental change in international trade in recent decades has been the development of multinational 'supply chains'. The production process has been 'unbundled', with different stages of production taking place in different countries. An iPad is assembled in China, but only $10 of

The Director-General of the World Trade Organization is sounding despondent after the latest setback to the December 2013 Bali Agreement. Meanwhile, a survey of exporters has given some endorsement for the alternative path of free trade agreements (FTAs). Is there any hope for furthering the

'We'll all be rooned,' said Hanrahan, 'before the year is out.'   Pessimism is a key part of the great Australian tradition, reflecting a history of booms and busts. It has infected the debate on the mining boom of the past decade. But how does it make sense to treat a once-in-a-century windfall

I've just written on the widespread antipathy in Indonesia to foreign investment, and how it is colouring the presidential election campaign. I attributed this hostility to the historical experience of colonialism. Now the Lowy Institute's annual poll reminds us that a similar (if less pronounced

Foreign Minister Julie Bishop with senior BJP member Arun Jaitley in New Delhi, 18 November 2013. The largest peacetime operation in world history is underway, with 815 million Indian voters heading to the polls between 7 April and 12 May in a nine-phase general election. Opinion polls are

There are various possibilities for a Larger Australia. Michael Fullilove's path is to put more of our national resources into defence and diplomacy, as well as growing our population through increased migration and fertility, creating an Australia which walks taller on the world stage. A very

Treasurer Joe Hockey's speech at the Lowy Institute today picked up on, and in some areas expanded upon, many of the issues raised in Prime Minister Abbott's G20 address in Davos. As Mike Callaghan noted of the Prime Minister's comments in Davos, the Treasurer's speech bore the imprint of its