Australia is a small country economically speaking. Its resources are specialised. We can produce some things cheaply. But we can buy many foreign products cheaper than we can produce them at home. International trade, where we swap some of one for the other, allows us to live better. Since the early 1800s discriminatory trade policy has made Australia poorer. Both exports and imports have been taxed discriminatorily. The most common method has been high protection against some imports. Some imports have been banned. But the protective methods have been several. They have included obstacles to foreign ownership and takeovers in some industries. Before the dollar was floated the same bias was implemented by overvaluing, or leaning against the devaluation of our local currency.

Most of the discriminatory trade measures implemented by Australia today have accumulated in response to ad hoc pressures on politicians by vested interests. They are regrettable outcomes. We have transparency processes, notably public inquiries by the Productivity Commission, to put a limit on this kind of behaviour. Exposing the harm they inflict serves as a deterrent. Regrettably, and against that happy trend, over the past decade discriminatory trade has been entrenched by the deliberate actions of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT). Over a decade it has negotiated special deals with four or five individual countries offering them less protected access to the Australian market in exchange for less protected access to theirs. The trouble is that on both sides the privileged access is not necessarily the best deal that either party could have done. Far better would have been barrier cutting moves by Australia unilaterally.

In this seminar Dr Bosworth and Dr Cutbush will present their argument why Australia has to stop discriminatory trade deals. The talk is based on their critique of the 2013 book by Adams, Brown, and Wickers. ‘Trading Nations’. They argue that what is best for Australia is unilateral liberalisation, not Free Trade Agreements.