Australian Trade Minister Tehan: To decide ‘very shortly’ on WTO action against wine tariffs with Beijing

With the Australian-Sino relations on tenterhooks, the OZ Trade Minister Dan Tehan said that his government is legally preparing itself before asking the World Trade Organization (WTO) to resolve its wine-tariff trade dispute with Beijing, per South China Morning Post (SCMP).

Key takeaways

The WTO action was “under active consideration” and Australia would be “making a decision very shortly.”

“You’ve got to make sure that you’ve got the very best legal argument and the very best legal case to do that, so we want to make sure we’ve done everything we can to show the strength of our case.”

It’s worth noting that China in March imposed tariffs of up to 218% on Australian wine for five years, formalizing curbs that had been in place for months amid an increasingly fraught relationship with Canberra.