British Secretary of Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs Dominic Raab yesterday said that he hopes a free-trade deal with Australia would be one of the first such pacts to be secured now that the UK has left the EU.
After leaving the EU on Jan. 31, the UK entered a transition period that allows it to negotiate future ties with Brussels and to begin talks with other major economies, such as the US and Japan.
“We have a trade relationship already worth 17 billion pounds [US$22.1 billion], but we have the potential to do so much more,” Raab told reporters in Canberra.
“Australia hopefully will be part of that first wave of high-priority deals that we are pursuing,” he said after meeting Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs Marise Payne.
Neither Raab nor Payne gave any timetable for the start of free-trade talks.
Australia is already in talks with the EU on a trade deal, but Payne said the talks with Brussels would not slow the progress of a deal with the UK.
Although Australia has strong ties with the UK as a former colony, the trading relationship has waned significantly over the past 50 years.
The UK takes just 3 percent of Australia’s exports, while China takes nearly 40 percent.
The UK’s entry into the Common Market in 1973 was widely considered a betrayal in Australia, upending decades of tradition and a host of tariff deals.
Supporters of the UK’s exit from the EU have argued that “family ties” with Commonwealth members, such as Australia, could compensate for the partial loss of the EU’s 444 million customers.
During his two-day visit to Australia, Raab was also due to meet Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Australian Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment Simon Birmingham.
The talks were expected to focus on trade, but London’s decision to allot a limited role for China’s Huawei Technologies Co (華為) in building its 5G network could also be discussed.
The world’s biggest producer of telecoms equipment faces intense scrutiny in the West over its relationship with the Chinese government and accusations of enabling state espionage, with the US urging its allies not to use the firm’s technology.
Although Huawei has denied the claims, the accusations have prompted several Western nations, including Australia, to curb the firm’s access to their markets.
The UK last month said that high-risk vendors would be excluded from the sensitive core of its networks and there would a 35 percent cap on their involvement in the non-sensitive parts.
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