Sydney, Australia, Dec 3 (EFE).- China has agreed to lift trade restrictions on Australian beef, the latest in a series of bans and tariffs that Beijing has lifted on products from the Oceania country, Australia’s government said on Tuesday.
“The (Anthony) Albanese Labor Government welcomes China lifting the remaining suspensions on two Australian meat processing establishments, paving the way for full resumption of red meat exports to China,” the government said in a statement.
China had resumed the purchase of meat products from another eight beef processing facilities in the Oceania country in May.
Beef exports to China – Australia’s second largest market for these products after the US – exceeded AU$2.2 billion ($1.423 billion) between July 1, 2023 and June 30, 2024.
“Today’s announcement follows forecasts that Australia’s red meat exports are set to break records in 2024–25,” the statement added.
China has now agreed to lift all restrictive measures imposed on Australian products since 2020 and which it began to gradually relax since Australian Prime Minister, Labor’s Anthony Albanese, came to power in May 2022.
However, this does not mean that bilateral trade has returned to normal because the resumption of Australian lobster exports, which was announced in October, has yet to be implemented and is not yet effective in practice.
“We are close to the point where China’s trade impediments which impacted $20 billion worth of Australian exports have all been removed,” Australian Trade Minister Don Farrell said in the statement.
In 2020, China imposed a series of trade restrictions on various products from Australia – with which it signed a free trade agreement in 2015 – such as coal, barley, wine, beef, lobster, among others, after the previous government of conservative Scott Morrison called for an independent investigation into the origin of Covid-19.
This measure further strained relations between Beijing and Canberra, which began to deteriorate after Australia ed several laws in 2017 to address alleged Chinese interference in its national policy and banned Chinese companies Huawei and ZTE in 2018 from providing 5G services for security reasons. EFE
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