Jim Carouso was travelling through Ballarat on a whirlwind tour of regional Victoria, which also involved visits to Bendigo and Albury-Wodonga. 

He met with business and civic leaders at a Committee for Ballarat lunch to discuss the state of the relationship between the two countries and the potential for increased participation in trade from companies outside of the capital cities. 

“The big smokes are one thing with a certain point of view and a certain interest, but you have a whole bunch of Australia that’s not Sydney or Melbourne,” Mr Carouso said.

“It’s part of our job as representatives of the U.S government to understand...what connections we can make.” 

The former economic officer is on his second tour of Australia after first making the flight in the early 2000s to help negotiate the Australia-U.S. Free Trade Agreement. 

He said one of the common problems with free trade agreements was that smaller companies don’t know how to access to the partnerships, but stated companies outside of the metropolitan areas were “hungry” to make a name for themselves on the international stage. 

“The U.S market is wide open to Australia,” he said.

“We even have a special visa category just for Australians, the only one in the world for a specific nationality to go and do business in U.S.  I’d just love to see more Australians take advantage of it.” 

Committee for Ballarat chairman-elect Nick Beale said the advocacy body would be working to “push Ballarat in America” following the meeting with the United States’ highest profile Australian representative. 

“It’s about Ballarat businesses trying to get their products into America, but the other one is to try and see if there is any opportunities to bring jobs to Ballarat.”