Australia and the Pacific Economy*

Abstract

The industrialization and growth of East Asian countries has shifted the centre of world trade and economic activity towards the Pacific. There has already been a huge redirection of Australia's trade and external economic interests towards the region, based importantly on the emergence of Japan as a major economic power. Australia's future economic prospects will be significantly determined by how it manages its trade policy interests in the context of continuing East Asian industrialization. The most promising Australian trade policy approach is one which allies Australia's trading interests to those of East Asian countries in seeking to maintain an open non‐discriminatory trade regime, supportive of the transformation of trade specialization necessary to the industrialization of resource‐deficient countries, and which marries that objective to the liberalization of her own and Pacific country markets.