The rise contributed to this year’s record trade surplus of $20.9 billion and was significantly higher than the growth in imports of goods and services, also up more than seven percent. According to a Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) publication, Composition of Trade 2010-11, this growth in exports was largely led by the mineral sector which recorded a growth of more than 48 percent. A 21.7 increase in fuel exports also contributed to the record year.

According to the report, China came out as Australia’s strongest two-way trade partner, followed by Japan and the United States. The report also shows that Australia’s top three exports were iron ore and concentrates, coal and education-related travel services.

The release of this document marks a new era in DFAT reporting, with an accompanying range of tables allowing users easy access to trade time series data. More information and the accompanying tables can be found on the DFAT website.

The arm of the law could even stretch to companies who have no physical presence in America, and only export to certain states. Decisions in J McIntyre Machery Ltd v Nicastro and Goodyear Dunlop Tyres Operations SA v Brown involved product liability claims against companies operating in the United Kingdom, Turkey, France and Luxembourg, but not in the US.

“The rulings in [these cases] mean Australian exporters … clearly targeting export to specific states may be liable under state law,” says David Miller, partner at Colin, Biggers and Paisley Lawyers. However, if a company has no specific business connections with a particular state, it may be exempt from the application of state law, he added. “It will all depend on the facts underlying the commercial dealings—you cannot divorce the legal analysis from the facts.”

Miller said the decisions should prompt Australian firms with foreign interests to review their US marketing and business activities, locate any potential for claims and update insurance policies to ensure they extend to US liabilities. “The insurance implications are substantial. If an exporter is found to have ‘purposely availed itself’ to a state market, the state court may have jurisdiction over issues such as personal injury claims resulting from faulty products.”

Dissenting justices in the McIntyre case said the ruling ‘turned back the clock’ in the age of modern trade and e-commerce. Miller said international trade law is a “space to watch”.

“These rulings remind Australian exporters to the US that their legal obligations may not end in Australia,” he added.

The European Commission Director General for Trade Jean-Luc Demarty said that not all options and avenues for market access had been explored. “That is why we felt we should formulate ideas to stimulate further engagement. Gaps can close if the political will is there.”

The talks have stalled over conflict between developing and developed nations over market access and trade tariffs. China, India and Brazil all have developing country exemptions for market restrictions, which the US believes are no longer fair as these nations have huge export economies.

The EU’s plan aims to keep everyone happy by tailoring tariffs to different products, focusing on high tariffs for industrial goods including chemicals, machinery and electronics and zero tariffs in other areas.

US ambassador Michael Punke said the US was open to the idea. “We can’t know what the outcomes might be but we can certainly know very quickly whether or not it can catalyse negotiations.”

However, Punke noted the plan only dealt with industrial tariffs and didn’t propose a solution for conflict over agricultural tariffs. Nations dependent on agricultural exports including Australia want greater access to markets in the US and Europe, which are currently heavily subsidised to protect local industry.

There is hope the plan will reinvigorate the Doha round, which is flagging in spite of a self-imposed completion deadline of November 2011. However, many delegates hold little hope as months of US-China bilateral trade talks have gained little ground. The Chinese ambassador Yi Xiaozhun has criticised the mercantilism approach to the talks, saying the WTO member nations had lost sight of the idealist aim. “Negotiations seem to be diverting away from the development mandate and towards market access.”

WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy said the implications of failure would be serious. “Failure of the WTO to harness our growing economic interdependence in a cooperative manner risks a slow, silent weakening of the multilateral trading system in the longer term. With this, a loss of interest by political leaders in many quarters, an erosion of the rules-based multilateral trading system and a creeping return to the law of the jungle.”

The value of the agreement has not been revealed, but a similar deal struck 10 years ago with Smith & Wesson involving 3,674 guns saved Queensland police $1 million on the cost of an upgrade. South Australia will export 2,405 revolvers, and Victoria will sell 7,513 revolvers back to the US manufacturer. A spokeswoman for Smith & Wesson said products traded in usually ended up on the US retail market.

A University of Sydney academic has questioned the wisdom of the lucrative export deal. “Australia leads the world with gun buybacks and destruction programs,” firearm injury prevention specialist Philip Alpers told The Australian. “Yet here we have police and federal government licensing the export of several tonnes of concealable handguns to the only developed nation which suffers Third World rates of gun death and injury.”

A spokesperson for the Defence Export Control Office (DECO) said it was not its policy to impose conditions regarding the ultimate end-user of goods when they were returning to manufacturers in the USA.

Speaking at the Australian Tourism Exchange this week, Tourism Australia’s managing director Andrew McEvoy said it was a little early to start popping champagne corks, but there are suggestions the ‘Oprah effect’ is working.

Online travel agency Orbitz reported a rise in flight and hotel bookings from Americans of nearly 10 percent and 13.6 percent respectively. Flight Centre/Liberty Travel has seen a 108 percent increase in flight bookings compared with the same period in 2010. US travel group Signature Travel recorded a 52 percent increase in Australian bookings.

Oprah Winfrey visited Australia to film four episodes of her top-rating show in December 2010. Consumer research recently conducted in America revealed that 61 percent of respondents aware of Oprah’s Australian shows had already investigated holidays in Australia. “About 74 percent of those who were aware of the shows agreed that Australia is worth travelling to,” McEvoy said.

“Since its announcement in September 2010, Oprah’s visit to Australia has generated more than 86,000 media articles across the world, with an estimated equivalent advertising value of $368 million,” he said.

McEvoy told Dynamic Export in February that he didn’t expect Oprah to be the silver bullet for Australian tourism, but he hoped to see the ‘Oprah effect’. “Within 30 minutes of the first show screening in the US, one agent from Texas specialising in Australia reported his first group booking. Another reported a 75 percent uplift in business since the Winfrey visit to Australia was first announced.”

Oprah’s four Australian shows will be re-aired from March 24, in conjunction with the next stage of Tourism Australia’s big American marketing push.

Securing Oprah’s visit was a coup for Tourism Australia, one the organisation hopes will help boost US tourism to Australia by 840,000 visitors. Tourism Australia estimates US travellers could add $5.5 billion to the Australian economy by 2020.

Education and tourism were the highest earners in China, with education related travel services topping the chart at $4.4 billion in 2009-10. Exports of other personal travel services were valued at $610 million.

About 165,000 Chinese students are enrolled in courses in Australia. This figure continues to increase although growth is slowing as education costs rise. The cost of studying in Australia for a Chinese student has doubled in the past two years to $126,940 according to estimates by Navitas, Australia’s largest international education reseller.

The USA came in second as a services export market, buying just under $5.3 billion of Australian services last financial year. The US has held the position of largest services export market since 1983.

Overall, Australia’s service exports fell just 0.2 percent to $5.8 billion in spite of the global downturn. Services account for 20.7 percent of Australia’s total trade in goods and services.

The report entitled Trade in Services, Australia 2009-10 is part of a series released by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade each year which measures Australia’s international trade.

In a speech to the US Chamber of Commerce, Gillard told businessmen that the World Trade Organisation talks were extremely important. “The round simply must conclude this year. 2011 is our last and best hope to get this done.”

The Doha round stalled in November last year over unresolvable conflicts between agricultural exporters. Australia led a bloc of low-subsidy producers to push for the US and European Union to reconsider their generous farm subsidies, which place low-subsidy exporters at a disadvantage. But powerful farmers’ unions in the US and Europe lobbied against liberalisation. India and China were also immovable on the significant import duties they impose on farm products.

Gillard also used her meetings with Obama to discuss the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, a developing free trade pact between nine countries along the Pacific rim.“The Trans-Pacific Partnership is another key economic opportunity. President Obama and I are committed to achieving a next generation trade and investment agreement,” Gillard said.

She said the agreement would provide a platform to liberalise trade across the region. “Indeed the Partnership could ultimately provide a pathway to a Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific region.”

Casella Wines Yellow Tail is the highest selling imported wine on the American market. It uses a distinctive Aboriginal stylised wallaby on its logo. The San Franciscan brand Little Roo’s yellow and black label features a leaping kangaroo carrying a joey in its pouch.

Casella managing director John Casella has accused the US group of “piggybacking” on the success of its brand in the US.

“This is not just about protecting our brand. We are trying to do the right thing by our customers. There is no reason for them to be confused.” The Wine Group has hit back by saying the Australian wallaby is not interchangeably referred to as a kangaroo. Casella is arguing the two marsupials would be indistinguishable to US customers.

Little Roo had been on the market in America for two years before Casella filed its lawsuit, chief executive of the Wine Group David Kent said. It sells at US$6 a bottle, a fraction lower than Yellow Tail. Kent said his company chose the kangaroo to convey a strong sense of place. “There’s been an American fascination with the joey, the baby kangaroo. It’s a totally different concept.”

Casella said he would like to solve the trade mark issue out of court. “At the end of the day nobody wants a fight. The wine industry has enough problems without having to deal with this sort of stuff.” But Kent claims The Wine Group had also hoped to settle this amicably. “We are always willing to accommodate a concrete legitimate concern. They have been unable to produce one.”

Casella is standing by his suit. He said Little Roo also copied the colouring, lettering and look of the Yellow Tail label. The two marsupials are both leaping off the ground and facing the same way.

The specialist draught beer dispensing equipment was developed in South Australia by local firm Hoshizaki Lancer. After the show it will be sold to bars and clubs through the US, Canada and Latin America.

Australia leads the world in draught beer technology, said Hoshizaki Lancer’s managing director Joe Thorp. “Australia’s harsh climatic conditions with periods of extreme heat and our love of icy cold beer have provided a fertile market for innovation in this area.”

The technology is completely new to the American market, he explained. “Glycol chiller plate technology, which enables beer to be served at 0 degrees in even the hottest ambient conditions, is a major point of interest.”

Hoshizaki Lancer spent 2010 gearing up for export into North America, conducting market research and developing products specifically for the American market. “We’ve also streamlined our manufacturing operations in Adelaide to ensure we can meet the anticipated demand from the American markets.”

The move into the US market follows significant export success in Singapore, the United Kingdom, Dubai and South Africa. Thorp credited the State Government and Innovate SA for helping Hoshizaki Lancer continue manufacturing in Adelaide.

Between January and November 2010 174,000 visitors arrived to attend conventions or conferences in Australia, an increase of 21 percent on the 2009 that brings the figures back to almost 2008 levels.

Tourism Australia managing director Andrew McEvoy said the organisation is leveraging the publicity generated by Oprah Winfrey’s visit by focusing on the United States business events market.

“Last month we hosted the G’Day USA roadshow to capitalise on Australia’s hosting of The Oprah Winfrey Show, with the aim to stimulate and convert bookings beyond 2011,” he said.

The roadshow visited Los Angeles, San Francisco and Dallas with a follow-up planned in Baltimore in June  and Las Vegas, as well as an educational visit mid year.

McEvoy said Tourism Australia would be also looking to strengthen ties with markets in North and South Asia to capture the return to business growth there.

“Europe is also on the agenda with palns including a presence at IMEX (Import Export, Frankfurt), a famil for UK buyers in June and an exhibition at EIBTM (Exhibition for the Incentive Business Travel and Meetings in Barcelone in December 2011.”