In an idealised world free trade, utilising the notion of comparative advantage, is unarguably good and preferred.
There is little doubt that free trade has been one of the factors that has led to the miraculous decline in world poverty over the past century and the improvement of almost everyone's standard of living. It is also, it seems, unarguable that free trade is good for each participating nation with that nation's total GDP benefiting.

But...
That's in an idealised world. In the real world, free trade is never completely free. There are always interventions that detract from its total utility. These can be a minor as "Buy Australia" campaigns through to governmental interventions to protect this or that group.

In a developed country, free trade involves winners and losers. Because the industrial base has been out-competed (fairly and unfairly) the losers are those involved in the industrial base. The winners are consumers who get their goods cheaper. Economists in particular and the political elite in general, are consumers and therefore love free trade. Factory-workers and their kin, not so much.

The rise of Trumpism is the cry of those free-trader losers who are saying enough is enough. They don't accept that things are fair and level, they suspect common interest among the consumer elite who foist free trade on them and those nations most benefiting from the non-level playing field.

Free trade benefits the nation (particularly a nation like Australia) but it doesn't benefit the whole nation and the numbers of losers has reached critical mass.

The aim isn't to turn away from the principals of free trade but to ensure that it is truly free (that means confronting those developing nations who game the system) and to ameliorate the consequences of being out-competed.

Aidan the only profiteering that occurred in Queensland's power was that by the Beattie Labor government, that was ripping a quarter of a billion dollars in special payments into his coffers each year, to try to reduce the deficit his wild drunken sailor spending had generated.

Well that was the case before hundreds of dollars were added to each bill to subsidise solar & wind. Mine with less people in the same house with the same services has gone from $360 a quarter to $860 today, in 12 years. Now that really is inflation gone mad, or a ridiculous power generation policy.

"If you really think we're so uncompetitive, why do you think the market has not fixed that by devaluing our dollar?" Aidan

Have you really not noticed our dollar has fallen from above parity to the US, [107C at one time], to 75 cents today. That Aidan looks remarkably like a devaluation, a 30.4% devaluation in fact. Thanks for highlighting that for us.

Aidan
ttbn isn't saying, but in any event, tax is by law a compulsory exaction. If you don't pay, it's a criminal offence. So it's six of one and half-a-dozen of the other.

Hasbeen
Have you ever spent any time in a third world economy?
I have lived in a third world economy(Laos) for the last ten years, and I can tell you that your understanding of how they function is incorrect. Most of the exports are controlled by government connected families, and they have little to add to a world economy all ready over supplied with stuff to buy if you have cash or credit. The problem for the worlds economy is that it is so efficient, that there are is no cashed up demand to increase growth. There is of course plenty of liquidity, which is owned by a small group of families that have all the consumables that they want.

Chris

Yes I have Lefty One, I think New Guinea & the Solomons are about as third world as you can get.

If you are saying that free trade has very little to offer third world peasants, or subsistence farmers, I agree completely. However Taiwan & South Korea, Singapore, parts of China & quite a few others have ridden to wealth on the back of exports. While that wealth may not be evenly distributed, most have really benefited.

Why anyone would expect all to benefit equally I can't imagine. Surely those who invest, risking their wealth, & those whose brains have guided the developments should benefit greatly more than the unskilled bloke who sweeps the factory floor.

He has to be happy that the new wealth will provide the education & opportunity he has not had, to his kids. Unless much of this new wealth stays in the hands of those who really generated it, there will be no money for future investment & development. Meanwhile even the floor sweeper is much better off than working as farm labour.

I would like to say that their watching our mistakes should enable them to avoid doing the same. However us watching the Pommy unions destroy the British car industry has not helped us stop it happening again here.

Sooner or later welfare, like communism, destroys any state that embraces it. It's been happening since the mobs of Rome, & will probably still be happening long after we've gone.

Hasbeen
I ran a backpacker in the party town of Vang Vieng for four years up till the end of 2014. I met many people and talked to a lot of them about their lives. One in particuler struck me as he was a lawyer from South Korea.He told me how many hours he worked and how it would be ten years before he had another holiday of many than just a few days. I was in South Korea in 73 just passing through so I know how far it has come from those days. Some countries in the east of Asia have come a long way in terms of stuff ownership, but I fear the price is the loss life quality.
I also worked in British manufacturing from the mid sixties to the mid seventies and am well aware of the collapse at that time.

The problem that I see is our ability to produce consumer goods far out strips the world ability to keep up with the level of production. So I dont see how creating more factories is going to help anyone except for the owners who use threats of closure to collect an increasing amount of community wealth to keep them from moving to a cheaper work force in another community.

Chris