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| 題 名 | Australian Trade Policy under the Howard Government: Implications for APEC=霍華德政府的澳洲貿易政策 |
|---|---|
| 作 者 | Leaver,Richard; | 書刊名 | 澳洲研究 |
| 卷 期 | 3 2002[民91.] |
| 頁 次 | 頁95-125 |
| 專 輯 | WTO與臺澳關係 |
| 分類號 | 558.1 |
| 關鍵詞 | 澳洲; 貿易政策; |
| 語 文 | 英文(English) |
| 中文摘要 | 近年來亞太經合會（APEC）陷入困境已是公開的秘密。此項秘密在一九九七年溫哥華APEC高峰會上開始流傳。儘管澳洲霍華德(Howard)政府一再宣稱APEC活動有助外交推動，但是不少人相信澳洲政府已將APEC的傳統貿易焦點自政府的議程中拿下，如過去一年坎培拉的外交與貿易部長發表過多篇有關區域政策的演講，但卻沒有一篇是以APEC為主題。貿易焦點已轉移至以推動雙邊經貿為主，尤其是東協-澳紐經貿自由區（CER）。本文主要論點有二，其一是作者分析霍華德政府上臺十八個月期間全力發展與美國的關係，明顯地背離APEC來證明霍華德政府從APEC策略轉向主要是導因於內在因素而非外在因素。他指出一九九六年霍華德政府將復活與美國的雙邊關係列為外交與貿易政策的首要課題以彌補工黨十三年執政的「忽略」。而此一政策導致澳洲政府對APEC的態度大為冷淡，甚至在金融危機發生之前即已顯現。 早在一九九五年澳洲聯邦大選前一年聯合政府即試圖顯示其與當時執政的工黨有所不同，至少表現在兩方面。其一，他們認為工黨執政十三年以來大力促銷地「中型國家（middle power）」的定位是種自我設限的概念。尤其是在艾文斯（Gareth Evans）擔任外長期間，當時影子外長唐納（Alexander Downer）一再宣稱澳洲實力「遠超過中型國家」。其二，聯合政府的幾位影子部長曾多次指出工黨過分重視多邊主義，他們若當選將會尋求透過重新強調雙邊策略來恢復平衡。 霍克(Hawke)的工黨政府在APEC成立過程中扮演領銜的角色，此舉主要是因為擔心美國的貿易政策的改變會導致跨太平洋經濟萎縮。一九八八年在經過了四年試圖以美元貶值來減少與日本逆差無效之後，雷根（Regean）政府祭出超級三0一貿易法案，該法案要求美國貿易代表每年列出不公平貿易的國家的名單，這些國家將在美國威脅對其輸美產品進行懲罰性經濟制裁的陰影下與美國協商解決紛爭。美國此項貿易政策的轉變使霍克政府面臨雙重危險。最遭的情況是澳美兩國發生貿易戰。其次是澳洲的出口利益可能會遭到第三者的傷害（如日本對美國壓力屈服）。在戰術與戰略雙重層面上，霍克政府視APEC為以多邊機制來解決區域貿易緊張的建立信心措施。其後的基挺(Keating)政府的APEC兩大策略是將APEC會議的層次從部長級提昇到由政府領導人參加的高峰會以及促使APEC走向以結果為導向，被認為是使美國願意長期介入APEC事務的必要措施。因此，作者的結論是霍華德政府的雙邊路線其實與基挺政府是殊途同歸。他指出基挺在一九九二年與一九九三年期間力圖引導APEC邁向區域貿易自由化與三年後的霍華德有同樣的目標，即使美國介入APEC。但是基挺的問題是雖然他不斷地強調遠見（vision）的重要性，但卻從未給予實現遠見的形式（modalities）應有的注意力。同樣地，霍華德政府著重雙邊關係的貿易策略的根本缺點亦在於此。結果，澳洲人再度發現到他們早就該知道的：澳洲經濟在經貿上的特殊性與脆弱性，而在此半世紀皆以雙邊為主的政治結構裡很難營造任何共同體的意識。 |
| 英文摘要 | It is an open secret that APEC has, in recent years, fallen upon hard times. That secret began to circulate at the Vancouver APEC summit held be four months into the Asian Financial Crisis when President Clinton casually opined that the whole event was really nothing more than ‘a few little glitches in the road’.Although his adviser Sandy Berger later tried to hose down that evaluation - ‘glitch’, he explained, was ‘an undefined term’ that expressed the president’s desire not to overstate the severity of the situation or to imply that it might be insurmountable - the comment nonetheless sat uneasily in the context of both American non-participation in the Thai bail-out concluded the previous month, and killing off a month before that of Japan’s Asian Monetary Fund proposal at the IMF - World Bank in Hong Kong. Since then, the direction in which APEC’s road might be leading has become more problematical. While trade barriers around the region did not escalate during the subsequent crisis, and this accomplishment of sorts enabled supporters to claim that the organisation remained on course, APEC was also forced to wear the accusation levelled at many other regional and multilateral forums - of fiddling while Rome burned. More particularly, the political bumps in the APEC road became more prominent: as economic issues slipped quietly into a holding pattern, shouting over ‘reformasi’ took over at Kuala Lumpur, while the dogs of war yapped around the perimeter of the Auckland summit. In spite of all this, Australia’s Howard government has nonetheless claimed private diplomatic rewards out of this general APEC movement. Questions about APEC’s traditional trade focus have shifted down the agenda of government concerns; so, for instance, despite numerous speeches by Canberra’s foreign and trade ministers about regional policy in the last twelve months, not one of them has primarily been about APEC, and the forum barely rates serious mention in any of them. Trade energies shifted elsewhere - to bilateral initiatives in general, and the ASEAN-CER integration in particular. Furthermore, while this diversion was occurring, recent APEC summits provided the Howard government with a forum for alleged political gains. When Downer struck up a personalised human rights diplomacy with Mahathir rather than follow Gore’s megaphone style, he was building on Howard’s 1996 repairs to bilateral relations with Malaysia, and the Kuala Lumpur summit therefore gave rise to a certain bragging about ‘the Australian way’ in diplomacy. Even more importantly, Howard’s successful Auckland effort to put flesh on the skeletal idea of peace enforcement in East Timor is now regarded by approving domestic audiences as a moment of considerable moral vigour that draws a line under a tarnished quarter-century record of realpolitik in dealings with Indonesia. From Canberra, APEC was seen to have a new, more political, purpose as a show-ground for Australian bilateral diplomacy - ‘a conduit for high level … diplomacy’, to use the prime minister’s own words. For Australia - even more than for other regional countries - much about APEC has changed in a short period of time, and it remains to be seen whether ‘the road’ that Clinton took to be relatively unproblematic only three years ago will ever appear so clear or one-dimensional in the future. If there is any significant long-term diversion as opposed to a short-term detour, than many will be inclined to explain it in terms of the intrusion of unpredictable exogenous factors (of which the Asian Financial Crisis and its on-going political fall-out is by far the most important). My argument here, however, takes two different tacks. In the first instance, I depict the Howard government’s detour from the straight and narrow of received APEC strategy as having endogenous rather than exogenous causes; it was, primarily, a product of what the Howard government chose as its over-riding policy imperative in foreign and trade policy in 1996 - namely, the need to ‘reinvigorate’ the bilateral relationship with the United States, allegedly to make up for the ‘relative neglect’ suffered during thirteen years of Labor rule. For the Howard government, therefore, the processes that would produce a considerable disengagement from APEC were in place well before the Asian Financial Crisis came along. A major portion of the following analysis is therefore concentrated on Howard’s critical first eighteen months in office when this convergence with Washington was effected, highlighting the alienation from APEC that came almost as an unintended (but logically necessary) by-product. The second tack is less partisan in the party-political sense, but will probably be more hotly debated in company such as this. I conclude by arguing that the bilateral route walked by the Howard government followed a trail blazed if not yet walked by the Keating government. From both the Liberal and Labor sides of the great divide, an established part of Australian political mythology would now have us believe that Labor in general, and Keating in particular, pushed Australian foreign and trade policy strongly towards East Asia. On the contrary, I argue that the critical reconfigurations of APEC towards visions for regional trade liberalisation that Keating championed in 1992 and 1993 shared the same aim that Howard had three years later - namely, to lock in American involvement. Keating’s problem was that ‘the vision thing’ was never matched by equivalent attention to the modalities for achieving the vision. At the end of the day, that may also be regarded as the fundamental flaw in the bilaterally focussed trade strategies of the Howard government. |
本系統中英文摘要資訊取自各篇刊載內容。