During the 1990's there was considerable debate in Australia about the desirability or otherwise of changing the nation's official trade focus away from traditional trading partners in Western Europe and North America to Asian countries located within Australia's own East Asia/Pacific region. This paper analyses Australia's trade patterns to better understand whether the economic opportunities that have emerged with East Asia's growth have trumped the nation's close historical, cultural and political relationships with Western Europe and North America. An analysis of cultural differences and trade indicates that culture plays little if any part in Australia's national trade outcomes, and that Australia's international trade interests are much more closely aligned with East Asia than cultural argument might have predicted.
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