This Strategic Insights argues Australia has been slow or else reluctant to accept that the previous global economic consensus of free and open trade (especially with China) being an unmitigated good is over.

Chinese economic and trade malpractices over a long period of time are having profound distorting effects on the global economic system and US dissatisfaction is deepening and irreversible. Advanced economies such as the EU and Japan share identical concerns.

There is little prospect of Australia ‘waiting out’ the US-China economic dispute. We can help shape and improve elements of a US-led collective effort to impose carrots and sticks on China to persuade the latter to play by the rules or sit and wait for a world which has already passed.

This paper is produced in partnership with the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney.