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All tax cuts decrease government revenue... that's not something I'm going to lose sleep over. The tax cut does not stop being a tax cut because you lose government revenue! :) And the bottom line is not that Australian's necessarily lose out of FTA's. In is not clear whether trade diversion or trade creation is higher in any FTA before analysis has been done. From what I understand, our proposed FTA with the US is marginally beneficial. I don't believe the same analysis has yet been done for China or Thailand. Of course, there is also the potential political economy benefit. That is, as FTA's discriminate against country's not included, it increases each countries incentive to bargain for lower trade barriers. In the end - this process could result in lower trade barriers all round. But like I said... I'm a unilateral liberalisation sorta guy... :)
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