The Australia-US free trade agreement’s impact on Australia’s copyright trade policy

The Australia-US Free Trade Agreement (AUSFTA) required extensive changes to Australian copyright law. This paper assesses the impact of these changes one decade on. It considers, first, whether the costs and/or benefits predicted in 2004 have eventuated, finding clear evidence that AUSFTA has undesirably constrained domestic copyright policy, but no clear evidence either of the feared financial costs to society, or, importantly, the touted benefits to copyright owners. The most significant impact of AUSFTA’s copyright provisions, however, appears to have been on Australia’s copyright trade policy. Pre-AUSFTA, Australia promoted multilateral standards and mostly sought to comply with, but not exceed, international IP standards. Post-AUSFTA, Australia has pursued an approach akin to that of the US: endorsing international copyright rules that are significantly stronger, and more detailed. The paper queries whether this shift has been in Australia’s national interest, and raises interesting questions of path-dependence in policymaking and trade negotiations that warrant more, and broader attention in the literature.     

South Africa’s trade in cultural goods and services with a focus on cultural trade with BRICS partners

ABSTRACT

As the potential for cultural and creative industries to drive growth and job creation is increasingly recognised, developing countries like South Africa are examining their cultural goods and services trade in a new light. This article investigates the pattern of South Africa’s cultural trade, with a focus on the strategically important BRICS trading bloc. Results show that, like many small, open developing countries, South Africa has a significant cultural goods trade imbalance, especially with China and India. While cultural trade policy is still somewhat fragmented, there are indications that where policies have been put in place, such as in the crafts and audio-visual sectors, progress in reducing significant deficits has been made. At the same time, the pattern of CCI trade preferences currently favours SADC, the EU and EFTA over BRICS partners. Finally, South Africa performs well in a number of services sectors for which cultural trade is important.     

European trade ceramics on the Arabian Peninsula 1800–1960

European trade ceramics found across Arabia date from the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries and were made at factories mostly located within northwest Europe. After c. 1930, imitations of European ceramics are increasingly represented from factories in Japan and later China. Combining the information from archaeological excavations on the Arab coast of the Gulf and ceramics from museum and private collections, information from the archives of the British India Office and the Maastricht pottery order books for Arabia, a relatively detailed overview of this market for trade ceramics can be reconstructed. Three key points may be highlighted: First, the complex routes via which European ceramics arrived within Arabia, second, the significance of the link between producers and consumers on opposite sides of the globe, exemplified by specific designs and types of vessels manufactured for the Arabian market, and third, new layers of meaning that were given to such objects as they were incorporated into the homes, social fabric and the lives of people in Arabia.     

Green cities? Urbanization,trade, and the environment

Is urbanization good for the environment? This paper establishes a simple core–periphery model with monocentric cities, which comprises key forces that shape the structure and interrelation of cities to study the impact of the urban evolution on the environment. We focus on global warming and the potential of unfettered market forces to economize on emissions. The model parameters are chosen to match the dichotomy between average “large” and “small” cities in the urban geography of the United States, and the sectoral greenhouse gas emissions recorded for the United States. Based on numerical analyzes we find that a forced switch to a system with equally sized cities reduces total emissions. Second, any city driver which pronounces the asymmetry between the core and the periphery drives up emissions in the total city system, too, and the endogenous adjustment of the urban system accounts for the bulk of the change in emissions. Third, none of the city drivers gives rise to an urban environmental Kuznets curve according to our numerical simulations. Finally, the welfare‐maximizing allocation tends to involve dispersion of cities and the more so the higher is the marginal damage from pollution.     

The East Asian War and trade between Kyushu and Southeast Asia in the late sixteenth century: Centered on Katō Kiyomasa's trade with Luzon

Abstract

This article uses Japanese, Chinese, and Western European sources to discuss the plan of the main Japanese general Katō Kiyomasa 加藤清正 to trade with Luzon in the course of the war to invade Korea in the 1590s. In December 1593, Katō Kiyomasa sent a letter from Korea to his territory of Higo directing them to send one of his “Tang boats” to import large quantities of goods such as wheat and silver. At the time, Tang boats were generally used for long-distance routes, and wheat was one of the main goods imported from Japan to Luzon, so this Tang boat may have been sent to Luzon 呂宋. As the East Asian War dragged on, Katō Kiyomasa was very worried about lacking munitions (particularly gunpowder), so he planned on using profits from the Luzon trade to supplement the ever-growing military expenses.

In late-sixteenth-century East Asia, military consumables such as lead and saltpeter were mainly imported through three routes to Japan: the Portuguese Macau–Nagasaki trade, the Chinese smuggler Fujian–Kyushu trade, and the relay trade from China or Southeast Asia through Luzon to Kyushu. However, around 1593, due to the impact of the East Asian War, munitions imported from China to Luzon fell sharply, and the Spanish were also faced with a lack of munitions. On the other hand, while Japan's gold demand as a means of making military expenditures was surging, Katō Kiyomasa certainly planned on importing gold from Luzon and using this to gather munitions like lead and saltpeter in the Japanese domestic market. In addition, starting in the 1590s, apart from Luzon, Japanese merchant ships also started visiting mainland parts of Southeast Asia and trading with them, showing that the red-seal ship trade of the early seventeenth century had origins in the late sixteenth century.     

The economic impact of the Australia–US free trade agreement

The Australia–United States Free Trade Agreement (AUSFTA) came into effect in 2005. It was the second preferential trade agreement that Australia signed, after its agreement with Singapore, and marked a departure from the primacy of Australia's previous trade policy of unilateral and multilateral trade liberalisation toward preferential liberalisation. This paper assesses the economic effects of AUSFTA by applying the Productivity Commission's gravity model of trade from its Bilateral and Regional Trade Agreements review. The evidence reveals AUSFTA resulted in a fall in Australian and US trade with the rest of the world—that the agreement led to trade diversion. Estimates also show that AUSFTA is associated with a reduction in trade between Australia and the United States.     

Cultural policy‐making in the free trade era: an evaluation of the impact of current world trade organisation negotiations on audio‐visual industries

The delicate compromise concerning the regulation of world trade in audio‐visual materials is about to be upset. Ongoing negotiations under the World Trade Organisation's General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) are seeking to establish, in the words of US negotiators, “clear, dependable and predictable trade rules” for transnational media exchanges. This article evaluates the impact of the GATS on audio‐visual industries and considers the extent to which cultural industries fit into the framework of multilateral trade talks. Based on interviews with trade officials in the WTO and the UK Department of Trade and Industry, the article concludes that liberalising and deregulatory policy shifts are more likely to emanate from corporate and state environments than from the slow and detailed negotiations in WTO headquarters in Geneva where “defensive” interests appear to be dominating over “offensive” ones.     

A regionalisation or long-distance trade? Transformations and shifts in the role of Tana in the Black Sea trade in the first half of the fifteenth century

Abstract

The Italian trading stations in Tana were important in the long-distance trade system of the Italian maritime republics Venice and Genoa. The deeds of two Venetian notaries who worked there during the 1430s, Nicolo de Varsis and Benedetto de Smeritis, are an important source for tracing the transformation of the issues and directions of Italian trade in the Black Sea region, a trade which was recovering from the crisis of the fourteenth century. Notwithstanding the Venetian-Genoese struggle and previous crisis events, this recovery made the economic conditions favourable. Although some scholars see a regionalisation of trade in fifteenth century, the source evidence challenges this interpretation. Westerners began to import Italian, Flemish and English textiles to the Eastern markets, and the local goods (fish, caviar) were widely exported to Europe – even to the markets of Flanders. Finally, the slave trade was intensive. My main argument here is that though there were considerable transformations in the Italian trade, there was no real regionalisation of trade, which retained its long-distance character.     

Inter-port transshipment between Shanghai and Hankou in foreign trade: 1864–1930

Shanghai and Hankou are located at separate ends of the most prosperous watercourse of Yangtze River. The transshipment in foreign trade between the two ports shows the limitation of Hankou as an inland port. Though the port grew due to independent direct imports and exports, Hankou was never completely independent from Shanghai. In contrast, Shanghai is of great importance to the inland ports of Yangtze River which is different to its effect on the ports of coastal areas of Northern China. Also, the region along Yangtze River is very important to Shanghai as its hinterland. The trading and transshipment between Shanghai and Hankou is critical to the whole region of Yangtze River and the development of Chinese economy. Related topics worth studying are commerce, finance, population mobility and urbanization, etc.     

Australia's flawed approach to trade negotiations: and where do we sign?

Economists have warned for many years that preferential trade agreements (PTAs) will not necessarily increase economic welfare in Australia given the relatively small size of the economy and the country’s lack of negotiating coin. The Productivity Commission cautioned in its major report on PTAs that there seemed to be a mindset of ‘agreements for agreement’s sake’, in part because of fears of missing out on a bandwagon that has attracted Australia’s major trading partners. Political and security considerations have played an important role in shaping Australia’s approach to PTAs. When politics trumps economics in negotiations of PTAs there is a risk of a rush to premature agreement that produces sub-optimal outcomes, that undermines broader plurilateral and global negotiations, and that introduces new and undesirable distortions in trade and public policies. Various theoretical approaches to trade policymaking provide insights into why Australian governments have been willing to conclude these sub-optimal deals.     

Hawaiians in the fur trade of north‐west America, 1785–1820

Abstract

The 1941 decision to remove the New Guinea administration headquarters from Rabaul because of volcanic dangers was again taken up by the post‐war administration under J. K. Murray in 1946. However, decision‐making and planning negotiations between the Territory and Canberra were so protracted by public service inefficiency, contradictory expert and official opinions and the difficulty of finding a suitable port to replace Simpson Harbour that very little had been accomplished by 1951 when Paul Hasluck was appointed Minister for Territories. Hasluck accepted the recommendation of newly appointed Assistant Administrator D. Cleland that the wharf be rebuilt at Simpson Harbour and the township be moved to Nonga‐Tavui. In doing so he rejected the long‐held position of Murray, approved by previous ministers, that a new town and port be constructed at Kokopo. But Cabinet, whose consent was needed for extra‐budgetary costs in the Territory, was motivated by a different agenda and years of planning and negotiations came to nothing when it was decided that Rabaul and its wharf should be rebuilt on their original sites.     

Aid for trade and ecologically sustainable development in Australia’s international aid program

In September 2015, Australia, along with 193 member states of the United Nations, signed the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. The facilitation of international trade and increasing foreign aid for developing countries were emphasised as crucial means for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. An important role was assigned to the international Aid for Trade initiative, which is about stimulating economic growth in developing countries through removing constraints to trade. Australia has been a strong supporter of the Aid for Trade initiative since it was launched at the World Trade Organization’s Ministerial Conference in Hong Kong in 2005. Aid for trade has become a central plank of the ‘new development paradigm’ of Australia’s international aid program. This article analyses the conceptualisation and practice of aid for trade in Australia’s aid, with a focus on how it links to ecologically sustainable development. It argues that Australia’s aid for trade is reinforcing the neo-liberal development paradigm in which environmental dimensions are overall neglected and private sector development and free trade are prioritised. In order to achieve international and national development goals of poverty reduction and sustainable development, environmental sustainability needs to be fully integrated into the growing aid for trade portfolio of Australia’s international aid.