Australia, India likely to expand free trade pact, minister says

Australia and India are likely to expand their free trade agreement in the “very near future,” Trade Minister Don Farrell said, while dismissing assertions that President Donald Trump was responsible for Canberra’s decision to lift restrictions on US beef.

Speaking at the Lowy Institute think tank in Sydney on Friday, Farrell said Australia and India would probably have already signed a deal adding products to their FTA earlier in the year if not for Australia’s election in May, which delayed the final negotiations.

“If the election had been a week or so later, we might have finalized the agreement,” Farrell said, before implying his Indian counterpart is now preoccupied with trying to negotiate tariff exemptions with the Trump administration. “I think we will get another agreement with India in the very near future.”

His comments came a day after India and the UK signed a major FTA in which they agreed to eliminate tariffs on a range of goods.

Australia and India signed an initial FTA in April 2022, which eliminated tariffs on a large proportion of goods and services. In total, trade between the two nations was worth almost A$50 billion ($32.9 billion) in 2023, according to the Australian government.

However, some elements, including a range of Australian agricultural products such as chickpeas, dairy and wheat, were left out of the first deal. Farrell said that because of political difficulties, the accord with India needed to be signed incrementally, with a final free trade agreement coming in “bits and pieces.”

Farrell’s speech came about a day after Australia announced it would be removing all restrictions on US beef imports, meeting a trade demand from the Trump administration. The US president celebrated Australia’s announcement in posts on his social media site TruthSocial.

However, Farrell said the decision had nothing to do with politics, insisting that it had been the culmination of a long-running review and had been taken on scientific advice. “We haven’t done this in order to entice the Americans into a trade agreement, we think they should do that anyway,” he said.

When asked whether lifting the beef restrictions would make a trade deal with Trump easier, Farrell said this remained unclear.