Amid the cacophony of local comment on Australia's new trade agreement with the United States it is hard to hear an objective assessment. Politicians and lobbyists on both sides have ulterior motives for praising or damning the deal. The New Zealand Government, under frequent criticism for its fraught relationship with the US, was never likely to applaud the terms negotiated by its Canberra counterpart. And Opposition parties were determined to paint the agreement in the best possible light so that New Zealand's exclusion provides maximum embarrassment for the Government.
Likewise, business lobbies argue that the pact offers significant advantages to their Australian competitors and therefore one more reason for the Government here to provide compensatory business-friendly policies. Meanwhile, the union movement and others opposed to free trade - along with many who abhor the Howard Government's uncritical support for US military policy - are anxious to belittle the reward Australia has received.
The truth, as always, is probably somewhere in between, although in this case it seems closer to the arguments of the detractors. Australia has given virtually free access to nearly all US primary products, manufactures and services, and more lenient treatment of US investment. In return the US will drop tariffs on Australian finished products, investment and services, but maintain barriers to the trade of most concern to Australia - agriculture.
The Howard Government has notably failed to gain any concessions for its sugarcane growers and little for producers of beef and dairy products. In a sense that ought to be no surprise. Critics of so-called free trade agreements with the US have always pointed out that they typically exclude the other country's agriculture. Yet Canberra hoped for better. Only last month, Deputy Prime Minister John Anderson reassured his party's rural constituents that it would be "unAustralian" to conclude a deal without concessions on sugar.
The day has gone when agricultural producers meekly accepted that free trade with industrial economies routinely excludes primary commodities. Australia was a leader of the "Cairns group" that forced farm trade in to the Uruguay round of global negotiations. Now, with the Doha round stalled largely on the issue of agriculture, it is disappointing that Canberra should agree to such a one-sided deal.
It will rankle with more countries than Australia that the US is today celebrating what it calls new opportunities for its farmers in the agreement. All US agricultural exports to Australia, totalling more than US$400 million, will receive immediate duty-free access. The products to benefit will include processed foods, soybeans and oilseed products, fresh and processed fruits, alcoholic beverages and so on. In return Australia gets tiny increases in its beef and dairy quotas (in each case by 0.17 per cent of US production) and a phase-out of above-quota duties for beef alone that will take 17 years.
The implications for New Zealand are obvious. If this is Australia's reward for faithful strategic allegiance in all things from unprovoked war to global warming how much less might New Zealand expect if ever it can discuss a bilateral deal? It becomes hard to convince the country that the likely gains are worth ditching the nuclear ban, which seems to be the price.
If bilateral deals are the alternative to progress on the multilateral front, New Zealand's nascent talks with China now offer better prospects. At present rates the Chinese economy will outgrow the US in this century, giving China increasing importance in the World Trade Organisation. That is the forum that matters.
Lopsided bilateral deals that exclude a large sector of the smaller economy simply devalue the meaning of free trade.
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