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.”