An Australian trade official said during a visit to Greenville that his country would talk with China about its plans for an Asia-wide trade agreement that would not include the United States, though no decisions have been made.
The proposal is China’s alternative to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a free-trade deal that did not include China and was championed by the Obama administration.
TPP died politically with the election of Donald Trump, who campaigned against it and said after winning the White House that he would issue a notification of intent to withdraw from the proposal.
That leaves China by itself to push its own framework for Asia trade, and Australia is listening, said John Angley, a trade official at the Australian embassy in Washington, D.C.
Angley, senior trade and investment commissioner with the Australian Trade and Investment Commission, was in Greenville on Tuesday, Dec. 6, to speak to donors and employees of the Upstate SC Alliance, the regional economic development organization with headquarters in Greenville, as part of his job to promote Australia’s economic interests.
He said during a brief interview with UBJ that Australia will at least talk about China’s plan, called the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership.
“Do not know where it’s going to go,” Angley said. “There’s certainly been no decisions made on that.”
Australia is open to discussing China’s proposal “because China is one of our big trading partners,” Angley said. “It’s also one of our largest investors. And also the other countries involved in those negotiations are our trading partners as well.”
Angley also said Australia had hoped that the United States would be part of TPP.
The United States is Australia’s biggest trading partner and has made more overall investment in Australia than any other nation, he said.
“We’ll wait and see what happens,” Angley said, stressing that it was not his place to weigh in on U.S. domestic politics.
