Rodney Tiffen, the good old days of prattling Poloniuses and back to the future with the USA Australia FTA ...

(Above: ah, the good old days. More Nicholson here).

Loon pond is usually dedicated to desperate commentariat columnists intent on shoehorning the world into their world view.

But every so often a truth teller comes along who beguiles with siren song, and we think what the heck, why not be positive about someone else being negative.

Cue Rodney Tiffen, and his eminently sensible Mind the gap: benefits from free trade haven't quit gone the distance.

The sensible Tiffen takes a look at the impact of the United States Australia free trade agreement, by simply looking at its impact on Australian exports to the USA:

Five years on it is clear the free trade agreement between Australia and the United States was a complete dud. Despite the fanfare with which the Howard government introduced it, no tangible benefits have resulted for Australia.

Australia's exports to the US over the five years to last year grew by only 2.5 per cent compared with double-digit growth for exports to all the major Asian trading partners. Since the signing, America slipped from third to fifth among Australian export destinations, overtaken by Korea and most recently India.

Of course back in the day the likes of Tim Blair - well it is called loon pond, so we must mention our loons - had great fun mocking the likes of Toni Collette for decrying the FTA:

"It’s so pro-American. It really doesn’t benefit Australia in any way - certainly not the cultural aspects of it or the arts.

"I just hope Mark Latham has the balls to stand up and be the visionary we all want him to be and say no. But who knows - he’s certainly pinned against the wall."
What’s stopping Toni from saying no to all her US job offers? Be a visionary, woman! Do something that benefits Australia!
Collette said she had to feel optimistic about Latham.

"Because I think I’ll slit my wrists if Howard gets in again."
Now you’re talking. (here)

But then Blair is such a muddle-headed gadfly that it makes mocking actors for being airheads somehow unnervingly like mocking Tim Blair - almost unsporting, like fishing for trout with worms.

And then we only have to turn to that prattling Polonius Gerard Henderson to read a sanguine analysis of Shakespearean proportions, despite the squawking of the sugar trade, in No sugar doesn't mean sweet FTA:

It is easy for critics - in Australia and the US - to pan the proposed FTA. It's just that most nations in the world would like to have an FTA with the US. And the reputation of the US as an advocate of free trade would be substantially diminished if it was not able to negotiate an FTA with an ally like Australia.

Oh it was a vision splendid for the future, never mind the sour sugar-ites:

Assuming the FTA is approved, Australia will have an agreement with the US to form the basis for future deals. In the short term, it will make it possible for Australia to monitor developments with other US FTAs, with NAFTA and with the proposed Free Trade Areas of Americas which would effectively move NAFTA into Latin America.

No developed economy would want to be excluded from such an arrangement. And none would sacrifice such a deal for any particular industry, including sugar.

If you could be bothered, I dare say you could frolic back through time like a young Michael Fox, and find a chorus of loon pond's regular correspondents joining in a croaking in favour of the FTA, such that poor old Robert Manne felt positively beleaguered and besieged in The Monthly in 2005 in Murdoch's War:

In contemporary Australia, a political party disagreeing with News Corporation on certain issues of fundamental ideological or material importance to it – like the invasion of Iraq, or the US–Australia Free Trade Agreement, or the cross-media ownership laws – runs a very real, and perhaps unacceptable, political risk.

Well sic transit gloria to all that and to Mark Vaile's heroic efforts in getting done over by the US trade negotiators, and back to the heretic Tiffen:

The value of Australian exports to the US is now only about a quarter of those to the two leading customers, China and Japan. The four Asian countries together take more than 10 times the value of exports to the US.

Moreover, between 2004 and 2009, the bilateral trade gap in America's favour grew even larger. Australia's imports from America have grown much more quickly than its exports to America. According to US data, the gap in America's favour grew from $US6.4 billion to $US11.6 billion.

Talk about being sold a pup. As if the US negotiators came down in the last shower. Can we send the bill to the commentariat columnists?

Here's Gerard Henderson lashing the left in Latham wises up on our links with US in 2004:

Labor is divided on the (FTA) deal and so far, Latham has said little. In Parliament, on June 24, Beazley presented a compelling case why Labor should pass related legislation in the Senate. But the Labor Left remains opposed.

The essential problem for Labor is that most nations of the Asia Pacific, including New Zealand under Helen Clark, want a free trade agreement with the US. Consequently, a decision by Labor to reject the deal seems unlikely, especially since it has the vocal support of most of the Labor premiers including Bob Carr, Steve Bracks and Peter Beattie.

The evidence suggests that Latham is moving away from, and beginning to regret, the opposition to the US evident immediately before and after he assumed the leadership. At least Armitage should be pleased.

Well Latham's long gone, turned into a commentariat columnist himself, and Beazley is off slipping on black ice in the United States.

So now it's left to the likes of the Tiffen to sweep up the detritus, "a long and sad list of El Dorados, loudly promised by governments, that failed to materialise":

As with some other central episodes of the Howard government - such as children overboard and Iraqi weapons of mass destruction - it raises the question of where self-deception stopped and a deliberate public con job began.

Did John Howard and his cabinet really believe the free trade agreement would help Australia? Even in the narrowly mercantilist frame in which he cast it, he won no benefits for Australia. Nothing, for instance, immediate for Australian agriculture. But perhaps his motive was electoral rather than economic - to highlight the American alliance and hope if Labor opposed it it could be cast as anti-American, and hence a security risk.

Tiffen goes on to make the obvious point that bilateral relationships offer great opportunities for political leaders to scratch each other's backs, but that the promised benefits are sometimes as elusive as an incisive insight from Tim Blair, Andrew Bolt and Gerard Henderson.

Oh, okay he said the promised benefits fade a little more slowly than the TV lights, but I like the notion that the dismal science remains a mystery to commentariat columnists:

Australia is a middle-level power whose prosperity is enhanced in a world where trade is free and governed by universal rules, rules that facilitate a level playing field and make trade between all nations easier.

A world in which bilateral trading agreements play a more central role favours the biggest countries, such as the US and China. Their power affords them superior bargaining leverage to win concessions favouring their domestic constituencies. Australia and most other countries have an interest in more global agreements.

Well I could go on quoting Tiffen all day, and add the note that the FTA has left Australian regulation of its media and Australian content in a mess.

But what the heck, wanting a refund from the incisive stupidity of those who blindly supported the FTA in its hey day is a bit like expecting someone to repair a piece of electronic equipment from China, when the cost of the repair exceeds the cost of sending it off to become landfill.

These days talk of the FTA's with China and Japan aren't so loud as they once were, but if they come to fruition, no doubt Australia's negotiators will get done over the way they were in the agreement with the USA.

It's always interesting to reflect on free market proponents who lack the negotiating skills to knock even a couple of RMB off a trinket in a tourist market, let alone work out what is in Australia's best economic interests ...

But of course way back when Gerard Henderson was, in the style of Tim Blair, lambasting the Australian film industry, and contrasting Australian films with Australian lamb chops in Filmmakers pick a weak plot on trade:

Last Friday it was open slather on the Howard Government, despite the presence of the federal Arts Minister.

Williams was not given the opportunity to briefly state his case - before the television audience. He just had to sit there and cop the criticism.

Then there is the issue of policy. US and Australian negotiators have made it clear that the FTA negotiations in no way threaten the existing rules which ensure local content in Australian television, advertising and pay TV alike.

What is being negotiated turns on the provisions which should apply for new media. That's all. Here the Australian film industry will not even state its bottom-line negotiating position. The likes of Maslin and Smith may not think much of lamb chops - in spite of the fact that rural exports help to sustain Australia's prosperity. But at least the rural industry knows what it wants in international negotiations.

Now of course in such a short time, we live in a world of multi-channeling, and soon enough digital delivery online to standard, then high def quality. And the boom in lamb chops never came.

It turns out that Henderson picked a weak plot on lamb chops, proving as a futurist he's on a par with Dr Lee De Forest's prediction man would never reach the moon, or Lord Haldane's insight that the aeroplane will never fly (and more here).

So it goes for a prattling Polonius ...