ABSTRACT
I have had the benefit of reading the draft paper presented earlier by Professor Warley. It is an excellent discussion of the current situation and I can find very little in it with which to disagree. It is certainly true that bilateral negotiations such as those between Canada and the United States can assist the multilateral negotiation process so long, of course, as the arrangements made in each case are compatible. Although my remarks will naturally be from an Australian perspective, I speak for myself and not the Australian government. We have watched with close interest the negotiations on a free trade agreement between the United States and Canada. You are important trading partners for us, and, more broadly, what develops here will influence, for better or worse, the progress of the multilateral trade negotiations (MTN), on which we are placing so much importance. Australia is one of the countries most aware of the linkages between bilateral and multilateral negotiations in agriculture. We are heavily dependent upon agricultural exports. Exports account for 13 percent of our gross national product (GNP), and agriculture makes up around 40 percent of our total exports, compared to around 8 percent in both the United States and Canada. Eighty percent of our wool is exported, 85 percent of our wheat, and 70 percent of our sugar (Australian Bureau of Statistics and Department of Trade). We do not have in place, for our major agricultural exports, subsidy programs that interfere with world price signals. When prices fall, so do our farmers’ incomes. Our farm price for wheat this year is around US$1.70 per bushel.
