Australia and U.S. begin free-trade negotiations, ina story unlikely to be covered in the American press. I have the usual ambivalence about bilateral free trade pacts vs. progress in the Doha round or other multilateral trade-freeing agreements. And I'm not sure I can even conceive of what the agriculture negotiations are going to look like if we're trying to move on FTAA, Australia, and Doha simultaneously. (Tariffs can be lowered for one country's goods at a time, but U.S. farm subsidies can't be.)

But if we're going to be in the bilateral deal business, this would be a good one to get done.