The Impact of NAFTA on Australia’s Trade and the Implications of Preferential Trade

This article will be exploring and evaluating trade relations between Australia and The United States of America, with a particular focus on the effects of NAFTA (North American Free Trade agreement) on the amount of trade between these two countries. I used trade data available over a narrow span of several decades in order to create several tables that document the change in volume of trade between Australia and The United States in an attempt to demonstrate that NAFTA and Preferential Trade Agreements in general run contrary to the principles of free trade that the World Trade organization espouses. By showing a strong relation between a downturn in the demand for Australian exports and the timing of the NAFTA’s signing, I show that Preferential Trade Agreements such as NAFTA and more recently, the Trans-Pacific Partnership may be leading to protectionist regional blocs.