Regional Development and Regional Blocks

The U.S. and Australian alliance share an interest in maintaining the peace and stability in the Asian- Pacific

The North American Free Trade Agreement or as its most commonly known NAFTA “is a comprehensive rules-based agreement between the United States, Canada, and Mexico”, that came into effect on January 1,1994. All three countries signed it in December of 1992; later on November of 1993 it was ratified by the United States congress. NAFTA was not only used in cutting down on tariffs between both countries but it also help deal with issues such as Transportation, Border Issues, and Environmental Issues between these two countries. NAFTA changed some tariffs immediately and within fifteen years other tariffs will fall to zero. NAFTA was not created to just lower tariffs it was also created to open protected sectors in agriculture, energy,

NAFTA took effect on January 1, 1994 with the culmination of all quota and tariff repeals on January 1, 2008. This agreement was designed to expand trade between Canada, Mexico, and the United States by reducing restrictions imposed by tariffs and encouraging foreign direct investment in the developing economies.

Australia should play an active role to strengthen human rights institutions around the world through multilateral agreement.

Asia. Over the past 50 years, Australia’s trade with Asia as a share of our total trade

As a nation with global interests, Australia deals with many countries in many regions and one of

In our economical national interest, Australia allocates a sector to contribute significantly by providing aid and financial support to promote the stability of a variety of countries within the Indo-Pacific. Within 2016 to 2017, 90% of Australia’s aid will directly go to the

Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) is the pre-eminent economic rally in Australia’s region. APEC’s goal is to drive an extensive trade and investment liberalisation and facilitation agenda. It is focused on structural reform as a means of raising competitiveness and the efficiency of trade and investment flows. It has helped Australia with building and strengthening ties with other countries such as Brunei, Singapore, Philippines and other countries in the region. In 2009, 70% of Australia’s trade is with APEC countries.

The Australia–Japan partnership is one of Australia‘s strongest and most mature international trade relationships. The success and strength of the partnership can be attributed to the commonly held values of both countries, including a commitment to democracy, human rights and the rule of law, along with similar approaches to international security. Japan forms Australia's second-largest export market and third-largest source of foreign investment. Australia is a critical supplier to Japan of clean and safe food products as well as minerals and energy.

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is an international agreement between Canada, America and Mexico. This agreement took effect in January 1994 and was signed by President Bill Clinton. This agreement brought great changes in trade volumes and open new opportunities for millions of labours. Later, in January 2008 according to the schedule all duties and restrictions were eliminated. About 45,000 tariffs were eliminated in 1994 and only 3000 were left until 1999.

Every ASEAN member state pursues its own national interests and is reluctant to delegate sovereignty to ASEAN. There is economic disparity and inequality amongst the countries. Member states like Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand “dominate intra-ASEAN trade, accounting for about 70%”, while intra-ASEAN trade across all ten member states is at 25%. Some member states have trade agreements with countries outside of the organization, which reduces the efficacy of trade agreements within ASEAN. But ASEAN fails to address this problem due to their main principle of sovereignty. The inequality and lack of intra-ASEAN trade undermines the goal of regional integration, thus removing authority from ASEAN. The lack of commonality makes it difficult for prosperous nations to cooperate with unstable ones, especially since some are bound to benefit more than others.

The most representative regional economic organization in East Asia is ASEAN, which was established in Bangkok and formed by five founding members, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand. Brunei, Laos, Myanmar, Vietnam and Cambodia also joined successively to form the ten countries of ASEAN. ASEAN is abbreviated by Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which was built to contain the Communist forces with the purpose to steady military affairs and political neutrality initially. According to Tong (2005), the content of East Asian economic integration can be classified as Free Trade Agreement (FTA) and Comprehensive Economic Partnership (CEP). Previously, East Asian economic integration focuses on the operation of FTA which applies the zero tariffs on member countries; nowadays, economic cooperation agreement is inclined to CEP which contains wider issues of economic cooperation such as tariff reduction, deregulation of investment policy, enlargement of factors of production and etc. to draw the relation between member nations and achieve a higher level of integration (Jin, 2003). Moreover, the continuing goal of ASEAN is to promote the inter-regional economic development, enhance the partnership and maintain the peace in the region (Taiwan ASEAN Studies Center, 2014). Before Asian financial crisis, ASEAN is a representative of the regional economic organization that especially focuses on

The association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) was established on 8th August 1967 in Bangkok by the Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines and Singapore.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has been the representative of regional economic cooperation and integration among developing countries. As part of the structural changes of the world economy, ASEAN has implemented intra-regional economic cooperation since 1976. The new goal is the establishment of the ASEAN Community which consisted of three pillars; ASEAN Political-Security Community, ASEAN Economic Community, and ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community. Since ASEAN has also been an important axis of regional economic cooperation and free trade agreements (FTA) in Asia and Pacific’s. A big step toward realization of ASEAN

In line with Malaysia's commitment to open regionalism, Malaysia continued its active participation in the ASEAN, APEC and the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) . ASEAN is the core of foreign policy and national regional cooperation in areas of mutual interest. Participation in APEC aims to foster cooperation in the field of global and regional trade, particularly in the areas of trade and business facilitation and capacity building. APEC also provides a useful forum to get feedback from the international business community in the formation of APEC initiatives that simplify and enhance business activities in the Asia Pacific region. Cooperation with ASEM is based on economic cooperation,