But there’s a deeper reason why it’s wrong to say that trade has winners and losers – namely, losses differ from costs. There are indeed costs to be borne by participating in commercial society, but these costs are not losses.
Someone who truly loses from trade is someone whose life would be better if she had never been part of a society in which trade occurs. If the worker whose job is destroyed by imports would, in light of this job loss, have had a better life had she lived in a country that had no international trade, this worker might fairly be described as being among trade’s losers. But if this person’s life, even given her loss of a job, is on the whole better than she would have experienced had she lived in a country with no foreign trade, describing her as being among trade’s losers makes no sense. Living in a country whose economy is connected to the global economy ensures that her access to goods and services – and, likely, to another job – is almost certainly much greater than that access would be were her country never to have had commercial contact with foreigners.
It might be true that had the particular imports that destroyed her job never been admitted into the country she would have been better off than she finds herself with the imports allowed in. But if, as is almost certainly the case, her life overall is so enriched by trade that her life, taken as a whole – even taking account of her job loss – is better than it would have been had her country been autarkic, then she is no loser from trade.
One reason why innovative, commercial free markets produce such an abundance of material goods and services for ordinary people is that consumers, not producers, call the shots. A foundational rule of a market economy is that consumption is an end, and production is a means of achieving this end. Anyone who wishes to enjoy the (ample) benefits of a market economy must agree to play by this rule. But playing by this rule has its costs, one of which is the risk that, in your role as producer, you must adjust to the demands of consumers.
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