Dani Rodrik is a National Treasure

He writes:

Trade was good for me. Was it good for you too?

You say it left you feeling really sore and that I did not even say a proper goodbye (let alone pay you for my share of dinner)? Well, I don't really care. I enjoyed it so much that we must have been both better off in aggregate. So we have to keep doing it. And in any case, if we stop you are likely to find some other way of hurting yourself.

Italics mine. That's a scarily accurate reflection of how trade is often thought about, though rarely spoken about. That's no surprise, though. It just so happens that those who tend to do the speaking on trade are those at the top of the distributional pyramid, and they hardly notice that their great gains aren't necessarily being matched. After all, the bad lover in Rodrik's example is rarely so self-conscious as to realize that what was good for him was not good for her. And he's even less likely to ask.