The Art of the Double-Cross by Donald Trump: Australia and USA Free Trade Agreement (AUSFTA)

John Paull ()
Additional contact information
John Paull: UTAS - University of Tasmania [Hobart]

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: Australia has a Free Trade Agreement with USA (AUSFTA) since 2004. The rhetoric at the time was that this is mutually beneficial. The agreement was negotiated in secrecy, it involved some substantial trade-offs by Australia which were never publicly debated but rather 'dumped' on the public as a fait accompli and hence without a social licence. The AUSFTA disproportionately advantaged USA, for example, by extending copyright from life of the author plus 50 years to life of the author plus 70 years (in Chapter 17, Intellectual Property). Australia has many Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) including with China, Japan, Korea, Indonesia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Peru, and Singapore. Donald Trump has recently unilaterally breached the AUSFTA by imposing tariffs on Australian exports to USA. These are not ‘reciprocal tariffs' as Trump claims. Australia does not impose tariffs on imports from USA (in accordance with the AUSFTA). USA exports more to Australia than Australia exports to USA. The conclusions that can be drawn from the US breach of the AUSFTA are that agreements negotiated and signed by USA may be worthless and their net present value has at least been devalued, they persist at the whim of an incumbent president, and the word of USA can no longer be relied upon. If Australia can be double-crossed by USA, then any country can be.

Keywords: Donald Trump; breach of contract; tariffs; President; Free Trade Agreement (FTA); Free Trade Agreement (FTA) President tariffs breach of contract (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-08-07
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-05210560v1
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Published in 7th International Scientific and Practical Internet Conference: Integration of Education, Science and Business in Modern Environment, Wayscience, Aug 2025, Dnipro, Ukraine. pp.23-25

Downloads: (external link)
https://hal.science/hal-05210560v1/document (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05210560

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().