It was but 2.5yrs ago that Jing left this country with the knowledge of furniture manufacturing that our country had instilled in his psyche.Now many others in China have the skills and incentive to construct furniture to our standards that have taken centuries to hone and perfect in Australia.

Just a short time ago in Aust Jing had to sack his only 3 workers since they wanted an increase in their hourly rate of just $3.00.This would have taken their hourly rate to $18.00 plus workers comp of 11%,plus holiday pay,long service leave,sick pay,and all the legal nonsense/insurances that our system now kills incentive to achieve.

Jing now in China,employs 60 factory workers for $1.00 per hr each.He employs 6 office workers at a slightly higher rate.As more skills are transferred to poorer countries we will continue to lose more jobs and our balance of payments deficit will increase expodentially.It was $600 billion.With the depreciation of our dollar, it is now $750 billion,or $75,000.00 for every working person.

The Central Banks of the World have now more than doubled the amount of money in a debt trap that has over inflated all our assets,and we seem quite contented to accept the distortions in our economy that reward,rapacious,impotent greed and not those who produce.Hyper-inflation,and stagflation are looming on the horizon.

We have rules for the "World Game" ,known as soccer,but there are no rules for the Global Economy.Barack Obama is just the olive leaf to appease Western sensitivities.He like George Bush,will do as he is told.

Arjay.... welcome to the ugly world of the 'employer'.....

yep.. sad indeed, but the reality is.. if union/worker demands continue upward.. the job possibilities will spiral downward.

The only thing left in the end will be some office jobs and infrastructure related work..such as for major utilities and mining etc.

The debt situation you mentioned is a time bomb.. we don't even hear it ticking.. all we hear is a cacophony of voices wanting more more more.... oblivious to the 'hell' coming upon us when the financial/economic poo finally hits the fan.

AAAaah..then there will be a mad scramble for survival... and all those bleeding hearts who are so insistent on 'human rights' will be bleating it out like lost sheep.. wandering around...glazed eyed.. panic stricken...wondering why no one is listening to what they thought was an "important" message.

Well, I am the uneducated one here, although you would not think it after reading this thread, so far.
Century's of honing our skills in furniture building?
Do you Arjay mean to say that?
Our skills may well have taken that long to hone but they came from Europe not Australia.
And poor old Polycarp that Christian gentle man, follower of a God that seems to have thought far differently than him.
Unions/workers, evil buggers!
Poly YOUR GOD WAS A CARPENTER
Are we to take it you again think it is Christian to see workers suffer low wages, low standard of living, for the good of the economy?
Baric and Kevin are under the control only of reality Arjay, how man can avoid these extremes is not clear but your mate from China has been learning a lot over the past 15 years m before that his Buddy from Japan did much the same.
I think your China never existed, the country had culture before we existed as a country.
Mate bob may well have leaned what we want to buy but his skills existed long before our country.
workers, their wage packets, are the oil our economy runs on, who wants to reduce that oil flow as a way of making some suffer so some prosper?
A Christian!

Dear Belly....

no one wants higher pay for workers than me :) my wife works outside our company, and we need every cent she can earn.

BUT....to earn something...she has to have a JOB..and if the pressure to pay ever increasing wages continues.. she (and all the others where she works) will not have one.

It's a simple equation. "Workers cost too much.. making our product uncompetitivie--- Solution.. re-locate factory to a place where workers are cheap"

I'ts not 'my' equation... it's lifes.

In Malaysia, the problem always arises at the border areas.
Malaysians want say $20/day for day labor work, but Indonesians will zip across the border and do it for half that and smile all the way to the shops.

A much better solution to just 'paying more' is to upgrade the quality of life in other ways, and to make life more fulfilling in non materialistic ways :)

nuf said.

I would b surprised to know that chinese factory workers are paid that much. They red chinese seem to be able to sell profitably into the indo local economy so they must be paying less than $AU5 per day.

More so than higher wages needing to be paid, in my view, company profits need to be regulated down thus increasing the "real value" of peoples wages, reducing the costs of commodities and services and giving the consumer greater purchasing power.

And obviously executive pay needs to come down, along with that of some professionals, most especially lawyers and doctors who should have the right to determine their own fees taken away and I note the words of a high court judge:

"Remorseless mercantilastion"

Justice and Medicine are rights not priveleges of the self indulgent rich and consequently everyone must be able to afford it.

And of course, the oldies/pensioners need to be ratcheted up and in order to do that the public sector wages in certain areas must come down.

This system of greed is good, a select few get the lion's share and everyone else gets a plebs lot is the consequence of the exploitation of an inherently flawed economic system and perversion of the "Free Market" principal. Necessity is often the mother of invention and when people are a hungry they strive all that much harder to perform and to encourage this, there ought be modest but real incentive bonuses for those that want to go the extra hard yards.

But to give excess for nothing, that leads to lazy, fat cats who crash the system and here we are.

Arjay when our Balance of Payments becomes too onerous to finance, the exchange rate will decline to reflect in the landed price of imports and we will not be able to afford overseas products. That will stimulate local production.

I never worry about how we, as a nation, are doing, If I were to worry about anything it would be how I am doing and I have just contractually underpinned any personal ‘exposure’ for the next year at least. In short, worry about what I owe and just pray the brainless wallies in government don't run us into a debt funded budget.

Actually, I expect to go deeper into debt next year but since that debt will be to fund revenue earning assets generating well over the interest rate it will cost and since my credit rating is better than the average sub-prime borrower, it does not bother me.

DreamOn “who should have the right to determine their own fees taken away”

I negotiate my own rate of pay. I have done that for the past 20 years and I always will.

Who are you or anyone else to decide that someone will not be allowed to earn more than a certain amount?

Those doctors and lawyers (and any other provider of valued services) compete with other doctors and lawyers etc.

Negotiating a fee for service no different to buying anything,

Just as the beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so too the value is in the eye of the buyer.

I recall recently paying a barrister over $800 for an hour of his time. His advise saved me $40,000 and a lot of anguish. He was worth every cent.

The world tried globalisation and "free-trade" and it has failed miserably. "Free trade " is not about free and fair trade but rather that the top few companies and powerful men/women are out to expliot the masses; 0.1% of the world's richest taking advantage of the remaining 99.9%.

The workers in China are truly explioted by their government and big companies, both foreign and local. China is in deep trouble because she has been fooled by this "globalisation" myth first propagated by Milton Friedman and championed by Reagan, Thatcher.

Today the real value of the US dollars is worth only about AUD 0.5 (50 cents). The countries that is propping up the US dollar is China, Japan and oil-rich Arab countries holding worthless(defacto) bonds issued by the US governments and companies. They can't afford to let the US dollar find its real value through forces of the free-market.

One 'solution' to Arjay's problem is to have managed fair trade (in place of "free-trade") and limited free float of currencies.

In managed fair trade chances are that there is no over production of goods and services such as China is experiencing now (electrical, electronic and consumer durables) .

With a free-float of currencies, currency trading has grown into a casino of sorts. Together with other financial derivatives, traders wreck havoc the world's financial system. The whole industry of currency speculation and derivatives trading does not add produce a single unit of real goods. It's at best a zero-sum-game, but often its companies out to commit fraud like the Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae mortgage swindle that is responsible for this 2008 meltdown

“The world tried globalisation and "free-trade" and it has failed miserably.”

Bearing in mind the grid-lock which followed WWII, where a lot of damaged countries were desperately trying to re-structure their economies away from a war footing and were opting for a lot of interventionism and protectionism, combined with a significant portion of the world locked into the lies and myths of desperate and disastrous communism,
switching to a free-trade/globalised model of trade was eminently sensible for the following reasons

1 engaging through trade with another country encourages peripheral exchanges (example people who were suspicious of one another make personal friends), typically the Nixon initiative to China.

2 engaging in trade often requires businesses to set up satellite operations requiring transfer of skills and expertise, sometimes through people relocating. Countries with commercial investments in other countries are less likely to interfere (invade) those countries because they threaten their own investments.

3 protectionism brings with it its own disadvantages. Most notably the exclusion of better import sources disadvantaging the consumers who are forced to purchasing the locally produced product which, through lack of competitiveness, supplies inferior performance for a higher price and also monopolizes resources (factories) and skills (people) which could be more productively employed elsewhere (economies of scale).

I personally do not think the “free-trade” initiative has failed at all.

Example: whilst “inflation” in Australia has marched ahead, the price of electrical tools available in Bunnings and compatible domestic appliances available in electrical shops has fallen well below what they cost 25 years ago and they often offer superior features to what was on offer 25 years ago.

I do think that a lot of people resent change, when it effects them in their comfort zone, even good change, which has otherwise seen them more able to afford many consumer products which would have been priced beyond their personal budgets.

Free trade offers opportunity for all countries to enhance the quality of life of their peoples. Protectionism does the opposite.

Col Rogue,

I am in complete agreement with you that free trade as promoted by Adam Smith in his magnum opus Wealth of Nations is the ideal the world has to go for. But "free-trade" in practice is far from ideal.

Britain preached 'free-trade' during the height of her colonial power. Raw cotton was bought at rock-bottom prices from India, but were sold back to India at many times what was paid for. It was a crime to spin cotton into yarn and weave yarn into cloth in India. It_ hurt factories in Manchester.

Gandhi described the process:

"English people buy Indian cotton in the field, picked by Indian labor at seven cents a day, through an optional monopoly.

This cotton is shipped on British bottoms, a three-week journey across the Indian Ocean, down the Red Sea, across the Mediterranean, through Gibraltar, across the Bay of Biscay and the Atlantic Ocean to London. One hundred per cent profit on this freight is regarded as small.

The cotton is turned into cloth in Lancashire. You pay shilling wages instead of Indian pennies to your workers. The English worker not only has the advantage of better wages, but the steel companies of England get the profit of building the factories and machines. Wages; profits; all these are spent in_England.

The finished product is sent back to India at European shipping rates, once again on British ships. The captains, officers, sailors of these ships, whose wages must be paid, are English. The only Indians who profit are a few lascars who do the dirty work on the boats for a few cents a_day.

The cloth is finally sold back to the kings and landlords of India who got the money to buy this expensive cloth out of the poor peasants of India who worked at seven cents a day(Fisher_1932_pp_154-156)"

The machinations of the rich and powerful are still the same. They have not changed but appear in a more subtle form.

Lori Wallach a trade lawyer and world citizen knows what she is talking about. Three fantastic videos by her on "free-trade"
http://www.globalissues.org/video/728/lori-wallach-free-trade-how-free-is-it

I think that may have been *Mr Wudd's* motorcade that just passed us on the way home all of about 10 mins ago.

Finished shopping, pulled into Maccas Jimbaran for late lunch. Ordered a cheese burger combo but got a Big Mac.

On the way out, coppers everywhere at every intersection, intersperced with military police. Didn't notice any of the really hard core guys with machine guns like just after the executions though.

Then cop cars, flashing lights, a few big motor bikes, then a big black flash Merc followed by a couple of mini buses full of whiteys.

Ever so tempted to flip the Merc the bird but just barely managed to restrain myself.

I guess they were down at one of the flash Nusa Dua hotels out the front, or mayb it was some other hob nob altogether.

Well, *Col Rouge* the red necked propaganda parrot extraordinaire.

Who am I or anyone else U ask?

Simply, we are the people who are of the view that the needs of the many outweigh the wants of the few.

As for yr chinese tools, I personally do not support providing profits to war criminals and human rights abusers who not only keep their own work force in nigh on slave conditions and use not their wages for advancing the social security of the people as elicited in the following report:

2008
REPORT TO CONGRESS
of the
U.S.-CHINA ECONOMIC AND
SECURITY REVIEW COMMISSION
ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
NOVEMBER 2008
Printed for the use of the
U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.uscc.gov

BUT worse still use their profits, that we in part provide them by buying their 2nd rate goods, to make weapons to sell and earn more profits to the people who are fighting, killing and still trying to kill our Australian too dumb to know any better defence personnel.

These scum who argue that Human Rights should be divorced from trade ought consider making their own trip to red china, and maybe if they're lucky, their family will get to pay for a bullet to their mid brain for being opinionated or otherwise exercising the rights which we so often take for granted.

Arjay, I remind you that our trade account for September was
actually around the 3 billion$ in the black. The problem is
our current account, which includes interest payments on loans etc.

If Australians saved more, then there would be no need to borrow
from overseas. That is why I make my suggestion to index
interest from bank deposits, ie to make it worthwhile for savers,
which is not the case right now, due to inflation not being allowed
for in the tax system.

We could also introduce tariffs etc, which we tried before. It
failed, as it makes goods far more expensive for consumers, so
lowers their living standard. It also creates local monopolies,
given our relatively small population. The result is shoddy goods
at an expensive price, consumers lose.

Let me put it this way. If you were forced to pay 8000$ for
the next computer that you buy, as it was Australian made, would
you be better off?

It seem to me you are not separating the two distinct markets,
one of mass produced consumer goods, made on the cheap. The
other of speciality products, made to fit, exclusive design,
specialised timbers etc, where locals have the market all to
themselves. Australians should do things where they have a
comparative advantage, not try to compete with those who do some
things better and cheaper.

Yabby,Jing is making speciality furniture for retailers both here and in the US.He was making furniture here eg a table $1100 and it was retailing in a Mosman store for $8000.00 and in one instance $15,000.00.

He is now doing office fitouts for the US which is a speciality and specific manufacturing process.This new knowledge is slowly filtering into the Chinese market and he tells me he has a 5 yr window of opportunity before the margins are squeezed by other local manufacturers.This implies that the Chinese locals can go far cheaper and even high tech machines will not save our local manufacturers.

*and it was retailing in a Mosman store for $8000.00 and in one instance $15,000.00.*

But Arjay, when people spend that kind of money on a table, they
are buying a status symbol. Do you really think that when
"Made in China" is on the label, it will still be one?

I remind you that today the largest market for Rolex watches,
Hermes handbags from France etc, is in fact in China. The wealthy
like to differentiate themselves from the rest of us, they do it
through these products.

When companies or people have fitouts and want things altered,
change their minds as they go etc, the locals will always have
a huge advantage, for they are on site to respond. It is that
kind of service that they will pay for. Kitchens are an other
example. Yes you can get knock together kitchens, but all the
cabinet makers whom I know are flat out building speciality kitchens
to fit the house being built etc. Cabinet makers can deal
direct with the client, cutting out importers, traders, shippers
etc. They will always have the local advantage.

A few weeks ago I wanted a couple of speciality doors made up.
I rang half a dozen cabinet makers. Not one had the time to
make them, the waiting list was at least a couple of months.

That stuff is a very different market, to the knock together stuff
from Ikea.

“…our trade account for September was actually around the 3 billion$ in the black

A sizeable amount of that was raw materials.

” …the locals will always have a huge advantage, for they are on site to respond.”

With globalization, this may not be true with new technology, cheap transportation costs and if your doors are wide open to foreign workers who are willing to work at a low rate.

Canon, makers of cameras, copiers, etc. has very few products made in China because not everyone pays attention to copyright laws. Soon these products will be copied and sold at a very cheap price.

Phillip Tang, pleased you agree but you then express criticism of what amount to monopolistic trade practices.
Free-trade, the process most favoured by libertarian capitalists, is the antithesis of monopoly trading, which is invariably demanded/supported by the weak minded, those who believe in government regulation of everything and conveniently forget that the most corrupt and pervasive monopolies are the government ones, where the “operator” controls not only the “production” but also “regulates” the market and thus rapes the consumer (aka Socialism/Communism).

The point with free trade agreements is they will, over time, improve the lot of the many through the value adding processes of trade.

Protectionism and monopolistic trade is not only bad for developed market consumers but through locking developing nations out of market opportunities, it diminishes their chance to improve their economic lot.

What I might suggest is, your criticism is that free-trade agreements are not working as well as their name should imply.

That might be so, so many developing nations resist removing their own tariff and quota structures too.

However, free-trade agreements, working in any form will be a great improvement on their alternative, being “protectionism” and all the loss of productivity / opportunity which that brings with it.



DreamOn “we are the people who are of the view that the needs of the many outweigh the wants of the few.”

is that the royal “we”?
when I asked “Who are you or anyone else to decide”, I was really asking in the singular, not in any collective sense, which you may feel entitled to speak on behalf of.

re “needs of the many outweigh the wants of the few”

sounds too much like “the benefit of the common good” to be anything other than a placard statement, like those brandished during rallies of the indolent, enviously decrying the achievements of the diligent and competent.

“the red necked propaganda parrot extraordinaire”,

that is a pretty accurate description, except for the “propaganda” bit but thanks for considering me “extrordinaire”,

very complimentary, so much nicer than being one of the “many” (with all those ‘needs’ : - ))

*A sizeable amount of that was raw materials. *

So what if it was raw materials? Mining and farming happens
to be what we are good at, for good reasons. Over generations
they learnt to compete on a global market, without all the
protection and subsidies paid to manufacture in Australia.

So in global terms we have efficient miners and farmers,
but a manufacturing sector that never learnt to compete,
so now much of it is in a hole.

These stats are from 2003 and the game has changed somewhat,
Germany is now the world's largest exporter, China is no 2.
But of the top ten countries in exports, 9 are from high
wage countries, 1 is a low wage country.

http://www.investment-in-germany.de/english/business/trade3.htm

Just look around you what we import from Japan, Europe, the US,
all high wage countries. There is more to manufacture then
a few cheap consumer goods.

Fact is because we mollycoddled and protected manufacture for
so long, we are still largely stuck with a backward manufacturing
sector, unlike Germany, Switzerland and all the rest.

Yabby “Over generations they learnt to compete on a global market, without all the protection and subsidies paid to manufacture in Australia.”

And that was the point when Hawke initiated the first steps away from the post WWII “protectionism”, back in the 1980’s and also why we are all better off than where resources (capital finance, factory premises, skilled staff etc) are deployed producing competitive products, rather than small quantities of expensive, local products, which are inherently uncompetitive and where the consumer is limited in their free choice because of huge price tariffs and quota systems.

What everyone has failed to realise,is that as more countries industrialise so the price of energy and resources increases.Average real incomes actually fall due the demand on energy and resources.

There are no answers to this debt spiral.Only the large corporates and Central banks profit form this concentration of wealth in a few hands.The spike in demand has precipated this present downturn.It benefits not the ordinary people in any country to be paying a premium for necessities.Cheap energy and resources underpins our living standards,and more competition is shrinking the very fundamentals that underpin growth.

*Col* Now if U run yr own biz, do the planning, do all the thinking, carry the burden of the stress, the compliancy issues and all of the rest of it, I personally do not begrudge U making a reasonable say 3:1 profit. 5:1 as is generally currently applied is too much. I digress slightly but commodities in Australia are no longer priced on their value, but rather on the price the biz community believe U can afford. Competition, in a lot of areas, is a fallacy.

I myself have for 95%+ of my life also done my own thing. And there have been times for sure when I've thought, gee, wouldn't a nice cushy 9-5 job where I do a few repetitive processes for a fat public service permanent contract just be dandy, and I could indulge myself after hours in my hobbies. But for me .. no ..

Even so, a fair days pay for a fair days work. And of course, fetid troll or otherwise, let the garden be rich and thriving with a plethora of unique personalities, and U are of course very representative of a segment of Aussie society and U have for sure the full support of the collective to be here and speak, within reason, as U please.

However, yr comments about lawyers having to compete sound like they've come from a liberal party weeties box. Are U aware, if a claim is not worth more than $100,000 and U have say a supreme court action, unless u can represent yourself, u may as well not bother as the fees will all go to wigged parasites. As they say, the law is for the rich, in most countries of the world, and yada yada yada

Q: Why do lawyers have "stand up fees?"
A: Coz most of the time they're sitting on their a_ses.

What a joke.

Yeah the streeteys reckon it was indeed Mr Wudd's motorcade to which I earlier refered.

I wasn't going to say anything but really, why I wonder did Wudd only get "B" grade treatment. Let me cite a few particluars that I have personally witnessed that people may form to some extent their own views.

Usually, they shut down both sides of the street. And in addition to having coppers plus MP's on all of the corners, they also have the machine gun boys. Plus they have advanced, rear and flanking contingents who do a progressive crawl from start to finish.

People that I have seen very quickly get well away from the street front. Of course, Bush Turkey would have shut down the comms sats too plus just got a chopper from the hotel to the airport. Maybe I missed the chopper?

They did also have a warship out front of the hotel though. But a few Bakso boys with grenades or improvised fertiliser bombs wouldn't have had much trouble playing bounce the bullet proof merc. As for the mini buses, well, .. strawberry jam I reckon. Mr SuraBaYa is fair game himself of course.

A Muslim striker wouldn't get far afterwoulds, but I doubt that would concern them. Undoubtedly they'd go with a fatuos grin from ear to ear.

Post the executions, there was a 2 week spate of a rash of SMS threats and a lot of arrests, none of which made the news here. Seriously intense security in contrast, a chopper over us for days on end, patrols on the local streets busting everyone all day long and sending all the unregistered workers back to Jawa and Lombok. The fishermen were grounded and so on .. however ..

Maybe they should rename and call themselves the DuD instead of the DoD? As with the agencies, I assume this is a problem from only hiring from the shallow end of the gene pool.

Arjay “What everyone has failed to realise,is that as more countries industrialise so the price of energy and resources increases.”

The most critical resources are the technology transfer form one country to another. Building a “green field site has some advantages on rebuild an exist facility, most importantly

You don’t compromise on innovation and new design
You don’t inherit existing (negative) work practices.

The price of energy is partially mitigated by the use of more efficient modern processes but agree, I doubt the whole impact would have been assessed.

DreamOn “I personally do not begrudge U making a reasonable say 3:1 profit. 5:1 as is generally currently applied is too much.”

That is very “BIG” of you.

Personally, I do not begrudge you anything. I don’t consider your financial circumstances as any of my business thus, I hold no opinion to how many time the national average income you may aspire to.

Similarly “indulge myself after hours in my hobbies. But for me .. no .. “

That is your personal choice, I assume it makes you “happy” but again, it is something which is not my ambit to comment upon.

but lets just say, I would take a pay cut if, in the business which I “carry the burden of the stress, the compliancy issues and all of the rest of it,” I aspired, ultimately, to only a 5:1 ratio.

If one is going to do something, think big, not bits.

As for “However, yr comments about lawyers”

I choose the lawyers I use. I spend what I need and go away. A lot of commercial / contract / licencing work, with the experience I have, I am confident to undertake myself.

As for the cost of a high court case… yes, I have withdrawn from several actions which I decided were not worth pursuing. It is part of the cost of doing business and there is no point in pursuing pyric victories.

The ppst you made following the one I have responded to is too jumbled a bunch of slang and meaningless drivel to warrant comment upon.

" ... The ppst you made following the one I have responded to is too jumbled a bunch of slang and meaningless drivel to warrant comment upon. ... "

This is of course why U have been accused of being little more than a fetid troll and propaganda parrot and of course trolls are not known for their high IQ. When U clearly can't compete, u resort to petty personal attacks. You and your lot are laughable. A number of my comments of your own admission U do not comment on because U do not wish for others to comment or be aware of your "grass root" values.

I assume U voted for the child abuser j.howard and his mates?

The mighty liberal party who incarcerate children until they suffer from mental health issues.
No doubt the Devil HimSelf would bow down and cower in fear.

What a laugh.

I'd post what I thought was the best solution for your likes but no doubt it would be removed by the censor.

Col Rouge.

Probably, you did not see my putting quotes within free-trade like this "free-trade", or have chosen to misrepresent what I have written.

The only advantage that you have given is cheap electrical goods made in China but have chosen to ignore the hundred of million people e.g. in Indonesia that are exploited. Millions of people in Indonesia are so disillusioned with "free-traders", globalisation that they are turning to radical Islam which they believe will bring them out of poverty.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdgMlXoQMbY

The fact that the world is affected by the global meltdown, increase in food prices, global warming, unprecedented fraud cases shows the "free-trade, globalisation" experiment has failed miserably. That the libertarian capitalists agenda to cheat and commit fraud.

http://www.forbes.com/2008/12/12/fraud-legal-sec-biz-wall-cx_lm_1212scamsters.html

Part of the transcript by Lori Wallach on "free-trade" is produced for your benefit.

"First of all, today’s trade agreements like the World Trade Organization and the 17 agreements it enforces or the North American Free Trade Agreement, those agreements have only a small thing to do with trade, and the majority of their rules actually are about totally non trade issues, like who can own and how you can regulate services inside your own geographic territory, or how your country, your elected officials on the local, state and federal level are allowed to regulate investors if they happen to be foreign who want to buy land for farms or factories, who want to run service companies. They have rules about how you can even spend your tax dollars. Set one size fits all these agreements. Obviously it has nothing to do with trade between countries, but rather setting a system of rules and policy vis a vis what you can do within your country.

So I would suspect that on the basis of that alone, Adam Smith and David Ricardo, those theoreticians are slowly rolling in their graves thinking about the fact that you call it the North American Free Trade Agreement, yet on top of all this other trade, non trade stuff, it also has a bunch of corporate protectionism."

Phillip Tang “The only advantage that you have given is cheap electrical goods made in China”

An example is just that, an example. It is not the whole of the issue.

One of the underlying points of “trade”, encouraged by being free, rather than restricted through protectionist policies, is to break down the sources of cross-nation suspicion and engender peace between nations.

It allows more people to be enriched by participating in it than impoverished by being excluded from it.

Such policies were initiated by Richard Nixon

And the example of China is particular relevant.

Under Mao and the gang of three who followed him, China was an insulated and closed community, few allowed in and no one allowed out (like North Korea is still).

Not known for much, maybe the redeeming point of Nixon’s presidency is his initiation of discussions with China.

In a previous post on this thread, I alluded to the peripheral benefits of trade, the friendships and the breakdown of suspicions between two unknowns.

Following the collapse of communism in the former USSR and the old Soviet Block countries of Europe, people, individuals, the folk that governments are there to serve, are now allowed greater autonomy and personal right to think, talk and travel as they see fit and aspire to being more than mere chattels of the state.

China likewise, has opened its borders. A friend of mine is from Shang-hi

He travels, freely, back and forth, he has family there and has brought his wife’s family here.

That is a vastly different picture of China which, in the 1970’s in UK the Chinese embassy were sending out people in black pajama suits brandishing hatchets to attack the “running dogs of capitalism”.

I doubt that change would have been possible if those who support free trade had not prevailed over the old school “protectionists”, who clung to the feeble belief in a “Fortress Australia” producing and manufacturing everything it would ever need, regardless of the cost.

To end with Margaret Thatcher
“Economics are the method; the object is to change the soul.”