Free Trade

An interesting op-ed in today's WaPo. Here's a snippet worth taking note of:

If you are going to be for trade, you have to accept that there'll be winners and losers, always remembering that the gains will be bigger. According to the World Bank, complete trade liberalization would enrich developing countries to the tune of $135 billion a year, more than these countries receive annuallyin aid and much, much more than they stand to gain from debt relief.

It's an amusing coincidence that this piece ran today as I had a discussion about this with an economist friend of mine just the other night. Schumpeter's "gales of creative destruction" are both the cost and benefit of engaging the free market.