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Free tradeFree trade
About the author
Ryan Neelam
Ryan Neelam was Director of the Public Opinion and Foreign Policy Program at the Lowy Institute. He led the flagship annual Lowy Institute Poll, was project director for the Global Diplomacy Index, and wrote about climate diplomacy and multilateral policy.
Since the 1980s, successive Australian governments have followed a free market economic orthodoxy that largely relied on open trade and market forces to shape the economy. But in April 2024, after fieldwork for this Poll, the Albanese Labor government announced the Future Made in Australia agenda — an industrial policy that seeks to use government subsidies and support to achieve economic, national security, and decarbonisation objectives. This follows a number of major economies, including the United States, China, Japan, and Europe, providing significant subsidies to support domestic clean energy and advanced manufacturing industries.
Despite the global trend towards market intervention and in some cases protectionism, in Australia, free trade has strong majority support that continues to grow. Eight in ten Australians (80%) say free trade is good for their standard of living, similar to the last time this question was asked in 2022. More than three-quarters say free trade is good for the Australian economy (77%) and Australian companies (76%, up five points from 2022). Seven in ten Australians (71%) say free trade is good for creating jobs in Australia, up five points from 2022.
Nevertheless, views on the economy are complex. Longstanding support for free trade coincides with a vast majority of Australians (87%) also supporting the provision of subsidies for renewable technologies, and strong support (70%) in 2023 for the idea of friendshoring (‘ensuring supply chains run through countries that are friendly towards Australia’).
