"In an ideal world"

Which has never existed, doesn't exist and won't ever exist.

"Some people choose to do things that they are not necessarily the best at"
"the fact that imported inputs would be cheaper."

So is it the "best" you really want, or the cheapest?

China can make everything cheaper than anywhere else, but is anything they make the "best"?

Everything they make is crap!

"The popular notion that free trade requires reciprocal agreements is wrong."

Right, we'll have no restrictions on their goods coming in.
While they keep their own restrictions intact.
Brilliant!

"One of the problems with bilateral free trade agreements is that they discriminate against countries that are not included."

Well, what's stopping them making their own agreements?
Obviously, they don't want to or they'd already be doing that.
If they are disadvantaged, it's their own fault.

"Japan will recognise that there is no particular reason to favour Australia."

But in your free trade everywhere hypothesis, there would be no reason to "favour" anyone EVER!

"Some people are their own worst enemies."

Like activists who use the clunkiest argument imaginable?

P.S. Hong Kong isn't and never was a "nation".

*And it would be even better if Australia just dropped its restrictions on imports altogether.*

This way the big corporations would be able to make even bigger profits.
Of course the people living in the third world countries would have to keep on working all the hours there are, live in dormitories, lose their health due to the working conditions and the environment in their countries would be totally ruined.
They would pay Australia to rip even more iron ore, coal, copper and rare metals, ruining the Australian environment also.
Diminishing rapidly the amount of oil and gas available causing shortages that will escalate prices, cause another GFC eventually and in the end demolish the manufacturing industry in the first world.
Jobs in Australia will disappear, standards of living will plummet.
And all this for more profit

Why don't we all just jump off a cliff like lemmings?

We build houses as good as you can buy anywhere! And we milk cows, make computers, and our cars are as good as you can buy elsewhere.
Who do you think invented the most advanced, most secure computer in the world?
Who invented the smell free two tank system, the digests biological waste, and turns it into energy creating methane? And who invented the ceramic fuel cell, with the highest energy coefficient in the world, at 80%, that can use this same methane, to power every family home 24/7!
A combination that creates as much as a 50% energy surplus!
We invented the pulsed laser light system, that enriches uranium to power making grade, and for far less capital outlay, than traditional cyclones or spirals!
And we invented the atomic absorption spectrometer! Which invariably graces every advanced laboratory in the world!
What we don't do,is pay slave wages to peasants, to get these things produced.
China is currently suffering from considerable wages inflation, enough to oblige some high tech manufacture to return home!
And it has a double GDP debt burden and a worthless derivative load, bigger than anything created in the land of the dollar bill; and a housing bubble, that can only end in mass misery.
Some say we can't grow rice, because it consumes too much water? However, it grows wild in the tropical north, which measures annual rainfall in metres, rather than MM's!
We are more than smart enough, except where it really counts, with our decision makers, and forelock tugging social commentators!
Hence our best ideas and people, keep migrating offshore!
Rhrosty.

Rhosty
I think you're missing the point. I don’t grow my own food (a few veggies excepted), make my own clothes, manufacture my own furniture etc. I work at things I have skills in, and exchange the money I earn for things that other people are better skilled at doing and making. That’s what the author means by “People do not build their own houses…” By analogy, as a country we should specialise in doing the things we’re relatively good at, and exchange what we produce for things other countries are relatively good at.

Robert le Page
Protectionism benefits businesses at the expense of consumers. Who do you think gained most from the era of high tariffs and quotas on motor vehicles – Australian car drivers who paid thousands of dollars more for their vehicles, or the car multinationals in Detroit and Tokyo?

And do you think that the people living in the third world countries will be better or worse off if we stop buying the things they make?

Rhian "as a country we should specialise in doing the things we’re relatively good at, and exchange what we produce for things other countries are relatively good at."

But with free trade it doesn't matter who's good or best at something.

All that matters is who's cheaper.
And they are rarely producers of "the best".

You can only trade goods.
You can't generally trade services.

If we don't *make* anything, what do we have to trade?
Hairdressing? Dry cleaning? Car repairs? Strippers?

They *can't* be traded.
The more our economy relies on services, the less there is to trade.

Our prices are higher because our cost of living is higher.
People need $18 an hour, not 5 cents, or they won't be able to buy all these glorious goodies.

People in the Third World don't need as much, because it doesn't cost as much to live there.

These "inequalities" are not going to vanish any time soon.

We must operate in the world as it is, not some "ideal" fantasy world, where everyone starts with the same conditions.

As a farmer I do not see free trade delivering sustainable profits and history suggests that agriculture is the first to feel the effects of free trade. The majority of countries value agriculture and food security far too much so they protect their farm sector in many ways . Supply and demand do not deliver the true costs of production in the short term . Whilst an ordinary business can depreciate their assets over a certain period , sustainable farming can not allow its asset base ( ie soil ) to be run down at all .Modern industrialised agriculture is also totally dependant on fossil fuels which are only valued at the cost of extraction not the cost of replacement
Why is it the economics exam question is "explain free trade " and the economic history question is " why does free trade not work ?"
This purist theory of free trade is not backed up by real experience