The Australia-United States Free Trade Agreement: the boomerang of competitive liberalisation?

Abstract

Not all that long ago, considerable intellectual energy was spent across Australia analysing the formation of trade policy. And much as elsewhere, there were two basic approaches. The first approach focussed on the evolution of the rules of the game in multilateral trade, stepping from the assumption that national policy was essentially an autonomous instrument designed to leverage those rules in directions broadly favourable to local industries. The second approach consisted of tracking the course of pressure group politics, and worked on the assumption that national policy was the vector outcome of many conflicting interests.