Our Prime Minister had little to toast last weekend with the country rejecting his Voice ideas but we all could be popping corks or unscrewing tops with the news that Mr Albanese will head to China and it will come after Beijing is expected to lift the crippling tariffs on our wine.

The AFR’s Andrew Tillett says this levy on Australian winemakers could end in weeks. And it was a wine-crushing tax being called an anti-dumping tariff, which was set at a huge 220%!

This coincided with the freezing of relations between the two countries, after Donald Trump took on China and its questionable trade practices. Trump asked his Australian ally (our former PM Scott Morrison) to stick with friends. China returned fire, slamming trade obstacles on coal, barley, cotton, lobsters, timber and even lamb and beef producers saw Chinese doors closed on them.

While many of these restrictions have been eased, wine remained a sticking point. So, this news is good for winemakers and our trade account. And it’s a piece of good news that Albo needs.

While Morrison’s fight with Beijing (that was egged on by Donald Trump) was seen as a good political move against a global-threatening country led by expansionist Xi Jinping, I’m sure many of our businesses/exporters would have preferred not to have tariffs and trade bans applied to their goods.

China is poised to be an important player for our economy and investments in 2024. If the world’s second biggest economy gets growing stronger again, that will be good for our exports and economic growth at a time when the impact of these 12 interest rate rises would’ve had their full effect on our economy.

And if China is playing fairer on tariffs on our exports, it will add to the potential growth for our national economy.

Earlier this year, China lifted the 80% tariff on Australian barley, and Trade Minister Don Farrell is likely to be seen as doing well in his negotiations with Beijing. I’d also add that Beijing would be happy to keep the Coalition out of power, given its experience with Scott Morrison, especially with Donald Trump being the leading candidate for the Republicans in the US election in November 2024.

If Trump gets the nod from the Republicans, you can bet a part of his campaign will be about “draining the swamp” in Washington to change the powerbrokers of the US, as well as taking on Beijing and making US producers stop making products in China.

While Xi Jinping and Anthony Albanese are likely to become buddies, our PM will be in a dilemma if Donald Trump becomes president again. Clearly, Albo would prefer a Biden/Democrat victory and so would a lot of our exporters, who’d be genuinely concerned about a new and re-empowered Trump.

Overnight we learnt that China’s economic growth came in at 4.9%, which was better than expected. Australia has to hope that its most important trading partner can get growth higher over 2024.

Numerous forecasters aren’t excessively positive on the 2024 outlook for China, but fund manager Jun Bei Liu of Tribeca Alpha Plus (who’s a keen China watcher) thinks the signs are becoming progressively better.

Albo has been told to get back to “bread-and-butter issues” that his constituency cares about. Therefore, seeing our economy not go into recession, while seeing interest rates fall, will be crucial in his re-selling of himself to his voter-base, who deserted him at the referendum.

The PM’s new election mantra might be “get the voter zing from Beijing!”