Push for Broad Tariffs on Chinese Goods to Spur Australia’s Reindustrialisation

A commercial lawyer is calling for sweeping tariffs on Chinese imports and a fundamental change to the China-Australia Free Trade Agreement (ChAFTA), arguing that piecemeal measures will not be enough to rebuild the nation’s industrial base.

In a submission to the General Review of ChAFTA, Dan Ryan, executive director of the National Conservative (NatCon) Institute of Australia, said the country must adopt a more assertive trade policy to safeguard local sovereign manufacturing.

Ryan, a former member of the Australia-China Council, argues “free trade” and cheap overseas production have dismantled Australia’s industrial and manufacturing sector, and that tariffs are needed to support reindustrialisation.

“In our view the reintroduction of tariffs on China are necessary to assist the reindustrialisation of our nation,” the submission said.

“[Non-partisan national security types] believe we can address problems through restrictions on a small number of technologies or industries with significant military potential (semiconductors, electric vehicles, etc.) while maintaining normal economic exchanges in other areas,” the document said.

The submission rejects what it describes as the “high walls, small yard” approach, where only a handful of sensitive industries are protected, saying this was insufficient for rebuilding domestic capability.

Instead, Ryan argues a broad-based approach to tariffs is required, not only to maintain Australia’s export of primary produce and resources to China, but also to protect local Australian manufacturing from cheap competition.

Current Approaches Not Enough

The review also critiques existing policy approaches across the political spectrum.

On the centre-right, it notes there has largely been no talk of tariffs, instead the Liberal Party tends to promote deregulation, tax cuts, and cheaper energy as the primary tools for economic revival.

However, the report argues this is not enough.

“Places like Ohio already have all these things—including atomic energy and a more favourable business environment. Yet, without tariffs, over the last 30 years factories and jobs were shipped out to China at great economic and social cost,” it said.

Meanwhile, the centre-left is described as relying on industrial policy, citing the Future Made in Australia programme, which will invest $22.7 billion (US$15.6 billion) over the next 10 years in specific projects largely based on renewable energy and critical minerals.

NatCon’s report warns that such efforts can still be undercut by “cheaper Chinese imports.”

While non-partisan national security experts have tended to focus on the aforementioned “small yard” approach.

Only recently has the idea of tariffs re-entered the national debate with National Party leader Matt Canavan saying in his address to the National Press Club on April 8 that Australia should reconsider tariffs and abandon net zero.

The senator said tariffs would bring about a “manufacturing renaissance.”

“It’s a tool we already use through the anti-dumping regime, but we just do so in a pretty ad hoc, band-aid, knee-jerk fashion,” Canavan said.

Canavan said a more permanent strategy was needed to protect against countries like China that “steal our industries, take our jobs, and do so with a strategy that plays that over long term. So to keep those industries here, we should respond in kind.”

Talk of Tariffs as Australians Pay More at the Bowser

In an earlier interview with The Epoch Times, Ryan warned Australia had very little national resilience due to years of outsourcing amid the greater globalisation wave.

Now Australians are paying much higher fuel prices amid the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.

Australia’s local fuel production has declined over the past two decades, with six of eight refineries closed since 2000.

Australia now imports 90 percent of its fuel, with 55 percent of petrol coming from Singapore’s Jurong Island alone.

“We have been hollowed out industrially in Australia. We used to produce a lot more things,” Ryan said.

“[For example], we obviously lost our whole automobile industry. We don’t produce cars anymore.”

Australia’s automobile industry collapsed in 2017, after Toyota, Ford, and Holden exited Australian manufacturing in favour of cheaper overseas assembly lines.