KEY POINTS:
Prime Minister Helen Clark believes New Zealand will receive more favourable consideration for a free trade agreement because the "tension" with the United States over the nuclear issue has been addressed.
But the strong caveat is that the erosion of bipartisanship on trade on Capitol Hill means that President Bush will have trouble getting completed trade deals through the Congress, let alone getting approval to negotiate new ones.
Helen Clark was due to arrive back in Auckland early today and in an interview with the Herald before leaving the US she effectively linked New Zealand's chances of getting a free trade agreement with the anti-nuclear issue.
She believed that if a negotiating gap came up New Zealand would be considered more closely "than if we had not embarked in the past 18 months or so on a relationship-improvement process - which has reached another benchmark with the success of this visit".
The United States acknowledged last week that the anti-nuclear law has strong support among New Zealanders - a diplomatic way of saying it accepted it was for keeps.
And that was important, Helen Clark suggested, because the differences over the nuclear issues had dominated the relationship.
"It is hard to think of another relationship where an area of disagreement has been allowed to dominate the way this one did and that is what we have been endeavouring to put right.
"It's a question of taking that residual tension out of the relationship.
"The US is the world's only superpower so the relationship is important. For too long, one issue was too dominant. Now that issue hasn't gone away but it shouldn't dominate the relationship."
She suggested National leader John Key, who called the trip a failure, should consult the panel of experts he had asked to advise him on foreign affairs.
