Any gathering of the country’s best and brightest is likely to be dog tucker for the cynical media pack and odd commentator.

Many of them, including myself, attended the Job Summit last Friday at Manukau’s futuristic but functional Telstra events centre.

Maori interests – now more pro-enterprise than their union colleagues – debated along with an overwhelming white male corporate cohort.

Though the summit was aimed at raising ideas, two issues – put up beforehand by the media – overshadowed the exercise: the future of further tax cuts and job preference schemes.

From an economic perspective, both are red herrings. Lower taxes and free trade in capital and labour are the mantra of any recovery.

But the political journalists are more interested in a government “U-turn” on the lower tax pledge – probably a given with high deficits – and the hyped up case of Levin clothing manufacturer Swazi, which had dominated the news agenda since Thursday morning.

That story, which featured Labour MP Darren Hughes’ uncle in full flight about losing a defence sub-contract to China, played up the Greens’ Buy Kiwi card on the eve of the government’s well publicised Job Summit.

The coincidence was too good to be true – and both TV channels had live crosses to Swazi’s factory during their current affairs shows about how jobs were going overseas.

The facts, when they finally emerged, provided a somewhat different story about lost sub-contracts through a substantial defence procurer, Yakka International, and that New Zealand business, in general, does better out of the opening up of procurement opportunities overseas under free trade rules and agreements.

The loss of these, by reneging on contracts by a “buy local” policy, would likely have severe repercussions.

Already, the new US administration is under fire from Canada, Europe and China, among others, for again attempting to ban imports of imported steel in defiance of World Trade Organisation policy.

As the world’s largest exporter, the US is being accused of potentially setting off a new round of trade wars that crippled economic recovery in the 1930s and contributed to the outbreak of World War II.

As Professor Burton Malkiel, author of the investment classic, A Random Walk Down Wall Street, puts it:

“Buy American provisions and other forms of protectionism will destroy jobs, not create them. They are an irresponsible and self-defeating response to a downturn in world economic activity. Beggar-thy-neighbour policies create more beggars and hostile neighbours.”

Some attending the Job Summit raised various job protection or preference measures, but these were talked down. As a populist issue in the media they are not likely to go away soon among reporters who think Smoot-Hawley is a good name for a band.