President George W. Bush and Australian Prime Minister John Howard signed a defense trade cooperation treaty (DTCT) Sept. 5. Although the text of the treaty is still being negotiated, it shares the same name as the treaty Bush signed in July with British Prime Minister Tony Blair and submitted to the Senate on Sept. 20. (See ACT, September 2007.)
Like its British counterpart, the DTCT will create an “approved community” of defense contractors that will be preapproved by the U.S. and Australian governments and thereafter not required to obtain export licenses. In a Sept. 5 press conference in Sydney, Dan Price, U.S. deputy national security adviser for international economic affairs, said, “Under the implementing arrangements that are contemplated by the treaty, our industries will move from the licensing regime under the U.S. International Traffic in Arms regulations to the more streamlined procedures that will be set forth in these implementing arrangements…. The bottom line of this treaty: better cooperation between our militaries and opportunities for our defense industries to work more closely together.”
The treaty would exempt nearly all “defense articles, including equipment, spare parts, services and related technical data” from licensing, according to a Sept. 5 Australian government press release. Retransfer of articles within the community would not require further approval, but transferring articles to third parties will require a license either from the U.S. or Australian government.
U.S. and Australian officials say the treaty would reduce wait times for licenses and improve communications between the two countries. At a Sept. 4 joint press conference with Bush, Howard said the treaty would “remove layers of bureaucracy for defense industries in Australia acquiring American technology, and we’ll enter that market on the same basis as do companies coming from the United Kingdom.” According to the Department of State, the United States approved 2,361 export licenses to Australia in 2006.
The Bush administration expects the Senate to ratify the British DTCT first, but a State Department official said that the goal was to have the Australian DTCT ratified by the end of the year as well. The Australian administration will have to submit the treaty to its parliament for approval, which would then make the document public under Australian law.
The treaty was announced with little consultation with the Senate, which has sole responsibility in Congress for ratifying treaties. One aide said that the Senate was only informed of the Australian-U.S. pact and the earlier British-U.S. trade cooperation treaty from the press and received no prior notification from the administration. In public comments, senators and their staff have said they will not pass judgment until the treaties are formally submitted, but past attempts to amend the Arms Control Export Act failed in 2004.