Walmart is Wonderful

[Gerald Tarrant]

It's a collective action problem, the kind that governments are best equipped to handle. The benefits of free trade (which accrue to everyone) are generally larger, than the losses that producers (a term which lumps the workers and capital owners of the less competitive goods) face in a free trade situation. (There are a few exceptions, game theory suggests that a market with only 2 or 3 large sellers doesn't behave the same way). The benefits consumers get from free trade are spread over every consumer of that good, and the losses are concentrated to the workers and capital owners. The solution is straight-forward, tax everyone (or just the consumers if you can figure a non-distortionary way to do that) and pay the producers the value they lose, and maybe some extra to cover retraining and moving as necessary.

I don't recall hearing anything like that the last time free-trade discussions made political news (the campaign). Republicans don't like the idea of subsidizing economic "losers" and democrats (Rubin-Democrats excepted) generally look at free trade suspiciously.