A favourite adage of mine is: with free advice, you get what you pay for. I heard it early in my working career, when Ken Warren, an elderly but world- and street-wise legal director of the South African Chamber of Business (Sacob), who also headed its Parliamentary team in Cape Town, mentioned it during a board meeting. If I had heard it from anyone else, I would have believed it to have been said in jest. But that was not the way of Mr Warren.

It is something that has resonated with me since, particularly when I entered the realm of consulting. Oh, how prophetic these words have remained.

Let me explain why these words were uttered in the first instance. As Sacob was a national chamber of commerce and industry (yes, I know the acronym does not reflect that, but that is a story for another day), any company or individual that was a member of a provincial or regional chamber could call on anyone in the national chamber for assistance or advice. So, as a consequence, there were portfolios that were turned into what you might call helplines. Those that made use of this ‘service’ tended to be quite demanding (I am not judging them) and were often not only seeking advice but also wanted to be provided with some form of guarantee that the advice they had been given was indeed correct.

I am still astounded that, while someone might casually tell you that there is no such thing as a free lunch, the very same person would soon ask you for something for free. Is it not ironic that, with most, if not every, promotion or sales initiative, you are required to make some kind of commitment – generally monetary – in order to get something for free. I have always had great fun when, on receiving a call from someone offering me a free mobile phone or electrical gadget, I accept the phone or gadget, but not the contract associated with it. I would appreciate the latest iPhone for free. But I have less appetite for a phone contact for 24 months or longer. Of course, like love and marriage, you cannot have one without the other.

University students – and yes, unfortunately, economics students as well – tend to be gullible when they are offered free products at university. One would have expected them to at least be astute enough to consider the expiry date of the product on offer.

When I first travelled overseas, instead of offers being ‘free’, they were described as gratis. At the time, I was so impressed by the inroads what I thought was an Afrikaans word was making into the overseas vocabulary. I was so disappointed when I realised that the word was, in fact, a Latin one.

Gratis, of course, means ‘without charge’ or ‘given or done for nothing’. So, it is a synonym for free. Or is it? Let us consider two words that are bandied about by Presidents and Trade Ministers without thinking much about them – free trade. But why is it called ‘free trade’, and not ‘gratis trade’? Could it be that trade can never be gratis?

On Friday, March 17, the two-day annual Group of 20 (G20) Finance Ministers meeting in the German spa town of Baden-Baden decided to not “renew their long-standing pledge to bolster free trade”. The very same group last year vowed to “resist all forms of protectionism”.

So, what has changed this narrative? Well, if, over the last few months, you have been visiting elsewhere in the universe, Brexit happened and Donald J Trump has taken office – the Oval office – in the US and, in line with his campaign pledge, is aggressively pursuing an America First policy. While Trump is saying America First to world leaders, which, incidentally, they approve of, they somehow, inexplicably, think that this excludes their country or territory. Trump’s policies include penalties for American companies that manufacture their products abroad. CityAM.com summarised it correctly when it stated that the G20 dropped an antiprotectionist commitment from its communique after opposition from the US. German economist Gabriel Felbermayr described this as “a clear breach of tradition”, meaning “now anything is possible”.

Interestingly, US Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said after the meeting that one should not read too much into the US’s desire to change the language used in the communiqué, as “what was in the past” releases was “not relevant”. He added that he had been “very clear that we do believe in free trade but we believe in balanced trade”.

‘Free trade’ and ‘balanced trade’ – sounds quite the same as ‘free’ and ‘gratis’, does it not? But is it? According to the economic definition, ‘balanced trade’ is an alternative economic model to free trade. Under balanced trade, nations are required to provide a fairly even reciprocal trade pattern; they cannot run large trade deficits or trade surpluses. In a word, no, ‘free trade’ is not a synonym for ‘balanced trade’. How did something like this manage to pass under the radar?

Meanwhile, quite ironically, on February 22, World Trade Organisation (WTO) members – well, 112 of them – ratified the Trade Facilitation Agreement, the organisation’s first agreement since its establishment on January 1, 1995. If you missed it, in the instalment of this column published on March 3, titled ‘It’s time up for the WTO and globalisation’, I explored whether it is time to call time on the WTO, the institutional champion of free trade.

Just in case you have been wondering who the G20 countries are, they are, in alphabetical order – well, except the last – Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkey, the UK, the US and the European Union (EU).

Spotted any G20 member of interest? Well, ignoring the US, the UK is a member in its own right, but then the EU – of which the UK is, for now, a member – is also represented and then there is South Africa. How long is Nigeria going to stand idly by?

With Article 50 yet to be triggered to officially notify the EU of the UK’s exit from the bloc, the next few months will be anything but dull. Whatever you do, do not accept something for free or gratis; it might well be a Trojan horse – expect no less. Do not expect anyone to put you first, if you are not willing to do so yourself. It is no longer ‘all for one and one for all’, but rather ‘one for one’.