A plenary session of the ASEAN - Australia Special Summit to commemorate the 50th anniversary of ASEAN-Australia dialogue relations in Melbourne on Wednesday.

As HSBC noted late last year, the bloc has been growing in importance over time. Partly, this reflected trade tensions between Australia and China, from 2020 to 2022, which disrupted Australia’s directions of trade and saw exports diverted to other markets. However, as noted above, there has also been a growing strategic link between Australia and ASEAN.

In October 2021, ASEAN and Australia made the historic decision to establish a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership, and, in August 2023, the Agreement Establishing the ASEAN-Australia-New Zealand Free Trade Area (AANZFTA) was upgraded to include additional commitments on services and investment.

For Australia, each individual trading partner in the ASEAN region is only a small share of total exports. Together, though, the ASEAN region accounted for 12% of Australia’s goods exports in 2023, up from 10.4% pre-pandemic. In aggregate, the ASEAN region is slightly more important for Australia services exports than goods, accounting for 15.4% of total services exports in 2022-23.

Australia and ASEAN have strong, long-standing, and vibrant social and cultural ties. Both parties are dedicated to enhancing their interpersonal relationships, with a particular emphasis on developing long-lasting relationships between the future FINAL 10 leaders in our region. They appreciate the insightful conversations that took place during the Special Summit's Emerging Leaders' Dialogue regarding strategies for achieving the SDGs and addressing the most urgent issues facing the region, such as investing in infrastructure and digital transformation.

Vietnam’s imports from Australia have picked up in recent years, in part thanks to support from commodity prices

Australia and ASEAN will continue to expand on their long history of collaboration and engagement spanning the previous 50 years. Solid interpersonal relationships will always be the cornerstone of their  collaboration. They'll keep bolstering the framework of the economy. Their architecture has improved the quality of life for their people, changed their area, and continues to contribute to their wealth. Along with accelerating the development of human resources to make them more robust, competitive, and flexible, they will attempt to improve regional connectedness in the direction of a sustainable future. By exchanging inclusive and equitable solutions to ensure the resilience and well-being, they will jointly address common global challenges such as poverty, pandemics, transnational crimes, food and energy security, climate change and biodiversity loss, marine plastic debris, natural disasters, and sustainable development.

Vietnam is the second-most important economy for Australia in the ASEAN region for goods exports, accounting for 2.1% of Australia’s goods exports in 2023, up from around a 1.5% share pre-pandemic. The bulk of Australia’s goods exports to Vietnam were coal, worth AUD5.0bn in 2022-23, followed by cotton (AUD2.0bn, discussed above) and wheat (AUD1.7bn).

Services trade is also important with the region, as noted above. Vietnam was Australia’s 11th largest services export destination in 2022-23, accounting for around 2% of total services exports, up around 10% since 2019-20. This partly reflects the recovery in Australia’s services exports following the reopening of its closed border through the pandemic, alongside Vietnam's demand for education and training services.