Safeguard Measures under the China-Australia FTA: The WTO-Compatibility Perspective

Since the Sino-Australia Free Trade Agreement came into force, the possibility of applying safeguard measures is also increasing along with the rapid growth of their bilateral trade. There are different approaches of applying bilateral and global safeguard measures in the FTAs, in addition to the WTO-compatibility requirements, under the multilateral trading system. GATT Article 24 neither entitles nor forbids applying the bilateral safeguard measures in the FTA context straightforwardly. However, requirements by the Safeguards Agreement as well as the ‘parallelism principle’ as established in dispute settlements must be complied with when a party excluding its FTA partner from its application of global safeguards, otherwise its WTO-compatibility will be challenged.