The myth of national competitiveness

This is an excellent post by Brad DeLong, explaining why free trade can only be good, and explaining why we should not worry that all our jobs and income will shift overseas. As the interesting discussion that follows the post makes clear, it is important to distinguish comparative from absolute advantage to understand why we all benefit from free trade. Paul Samuelson once said that the theory of comparative advantage is the only proposition in economics which is "both true and non-trivial".