The government must be crazy to agree to this 'free trade' agreement

Our IT, financial services, telecommunications, media, and pharmaceutical industries (just to name a few) will face intense competition from their more mature and cashed-up American counterparts.

The most likely outcome of this crazy arrangement is a modest increase in our exports to the US but a massive increase in US exports to Australia

What this means for our already huge trade deficit with the US is obvious. So much for the National Interest.

Equally concerning is that under the proposed deal, the government will effectively be signing away our sovereignty – our right to make decisions independent of outside influences – in two of the most important areas: quarantine laws and the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.

Under the deal, the US has won the right for American representatives to sit on the Australian bodies that determine our quarantine laws.

Similarly, the US has won the right to have American representatives sit on the Australian board that decide which medicines will be subsidized by Australian taxpayers’ money.

It takes little to appreciate the army of savvy US legal experts that will be aggressively advocating Australia’s subsidisation of American pharmaceuticals.

And US Pharmaceutical companies already receive enormous assistance from their own government through a sophisticated range of publicly funded intellectual property supports.

But our national selflessness does not end there.

Under the proposed agreement, we will sign away our right to screen most US investments in Australia. The neutering of our Foreign Investment Review Board will mean open slather for US takeovers of Australian firms and assets.

Ironically, in announcing this bonza deal (pdf, 22Kb) on their website, the US Trade Representative Office erroneously referred to our Foreign Investment Review Board as our Foreign Investment Promotion Board. This Freudian slip clearly reflects the role that the US expects the Board to play for America in the future.

Of course – the US will retain substantial screening powers over foreign investment under its anti-terrorism laws.