Trade between the United States and Australia is strong, as evidenced by the Australia–United States Free Trade Agreement. The United States is Australia’s fourth largest export market and its second largest source of imports.[51] The United States is also the largest investor in Australia while Australia is the fifth largest investor in the US.
Australia and the United States also provide significant competition for each other in several third-party exports such as wheat, uranium and wool and, more recently, in the information technology sector. Although the US has a sizable sheep population, American imports of lamb meat from Australia and New Zealand remain stronger than the domestic output.
In 2003, the two countries announced they would enter into a free trade agreement.[2] The Thailand-Australia Free Trade Agreement (TAFTA) entered into force on 1 January 2005. TAFTA has facilitated increased two-way trade and investment, improved business mobility, increased transparency, encouraged international best practice, and promoted bilateral cooperation in a range of areas including customs procedures, government procurement, competition policy and intellectual property protection.[3]
Trade is significant between the two nations. In 2010, two-way trade in goods and services was worth more than A$19 billion.
The Agreement resulted in Thai tariffs on virtually all goods imported from Australia being eliminated by 1 January 2010.[4]