This chapter examines the prominent role that Australia has played in the multilateral trading system, with a specific focus on the WTO and Australia's preferential trade agreements (PTAs). Australia has been actively involved in the WTO, through GATT and WTO negotiations, WTO committee work,...

Chapters relating to regulatory coherence or cooperation are becoming significant features in new preferential trade agreements, including the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). While the existing literature has considered in detail the potential for harmonisation of standards or institutional...

The relationship between the bilateral investment treaty (‘BIT') between Australia and China (1988) and the preferential trade agreement between those countries (‘ChAFTA') (2015) provides an interesting case study of the co-existence of successive treaties under public international law....

Our submission is focussed on how Australia’s BITs can be modernised to ensure that the promotion and protection of investments is balanced against the need to safeguard policy space for legitimate public-welfare measures or ‘regulatory autonomy’. This discussion responds primarily to...

Tobacco companies have expressed concern that Australia's plain cigarette packaging initiative breaches international trade obligations. This article begins by providing a background to cigarette packaging. It then examines developments worldwide and in Australia that have led to this...

The Australia-US Free Trade Agreement (AUSFTA) provides an illustration of the outcomes that countries with relatively little bargaining and economic power can expect from an FTA with the US. It also serves as a warning of how even an economically successful developed country may end up...

In this chapter, we explain and evaluate the AUSFTA primarily from an Australian perspective, given that most countries will be in a more or less analogous position to Australia when negotiating an FTA with the US. AUSFTA provides an illustration of the outcomes that countries with relatively...