U.S.-Australia Free Trade Agreement
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The Australia – United States Free Trade Agreement (AUSFTA) is a preferential trade agreement between Australia and the United States modelled on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The AUSFTA was signed on 18 May 2004 and came into effect on 1 January 2005.
The U.S. first proposed a free trade agreement with Australia as far back as 1945. In more recent times, the prospect of an Australia-U.S. FTA was raised in the 1980s by the Hawke Government, and in 1992 U.S. president George H. W. Bush offered to begin FTA negotiations with Australia, but was turned down by Australian Labor Party Prime Minister Paul Keating., was reluctantly passed, with amendments, by the Senate on 13 August 2004. After some delay, the U.S. Administration accepted the amended Australian legislation as being consistent with implementation of the agreement.
It was not until early 2001, after the election of George W. Bush in the U.S. and with John Howard in power in Australia, that an Australia-U.S. FTA finally began to take shape. In April 2001, President Bush signalled his interest in pursuing an FTA with Australia provided "everything is on the table". Following this, in 2004, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade commissioned a private consultancy – the Centre for International Economics (CIE) – to model the economic impacts of such an agreement. Negotiations for the FTA began in April 2003 and after five rounds of negotiations held in Canberra, Hawaii and Washington, D.C., the text was finally agreed to in February 2004, and signed off on by Australian Trade Minister Mark Vaile and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick in Washington in May 2004.
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