biggest political issue in economics for a generation. When I say this, many of my fellow free traders react with a mixture of disbelief, pity and hostility. Blinder, have you lost your mind? Professor Blinder ... says he is rattled by the question of how our country will cope with this phenomenon, especially in view of our tattered social safety net. "That is why I am going public with my concerns now," he concludes. "If we economists stubbornly insist on chanting 'free trade is good for you' to people who know that it is not, we will quickly become irrelevant to the public debate. Compared with that, a little apostasy should be welcome." What do you think? Saying that everyone could be made better off with increased international trade is not the same as people actually being made better off. There are winners and losers from increased international trade, and while I agree that the gains exceed the losses in almost all cases, the gains haven't been distributed in a way that leaves everyone, or even most everyone, better off (see, e.g., widening inequality and where the costs of these kinds of adjustments fall). When some people are made better off and others made worse off at the same time, economists cannot say it is unambiguously better or worse. If we are going to make the argument that trade is good because everyone could potentially be made better off, we should do much more than we have to ensure that