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Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Friday he’d ask Chinese President Xi Jinping to lift billions of dollars in trade barriers if the two leaders hold their first bilateral meeting this month.
Albanese was speaking in Sydney before departing Australia on Friday for an East Asia Summit in Cambodia, followed by a Group of 20 meeting in Indonesia, then an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum meeting in Thailand.
A face-to-face meeting between the Chinese and Australian leaders would mark a major reset in a bilateral relationship that plumbed new depths under the nine-year rule of Australia’s previous conservative government.
Beijing had banned minister-to-minister contacts and imposed a series of official and unofficial trade barriers on products including wine, coal, beef, seafood and barley in recent years that cost Australian exporters 20 billion Australian dollars ($13 billion) a year.
Albanese said a meeting with Xi was “not locked in at this point in time.” But China lifting economic sanctions was the first priority in returning to normal relations, he said.
“We have some AU$20 billion of economic sanctions against Australia.
