On what grounds can we, as free trade advocates, assert that globalization can harm the country? A straightforward explanation suffices: In standard analyses of trade, economists usually assign fixed values to a country’s productive capabilities and define trade as the exchange of the goods and services, with each country supplying those items in which its productive capabilities are relatively greatest. With this definition, trade can easily be shown to offer benefits to both parties. Economic analysis repeatedly bears this out. Hence, economists emphatically reject tariffs and other forms of protectionism as impediments to those benefits. We accept this conclusion for the assumed scenario. But when productive capabilities are changing, not fixed, the world enters a whole new ball game. As long shown by many economists - the latest being Nobel Prize winner Paul Samuelson - the end result of that productivity change, even after the period of adjustment, may be better for one’s country or it may be worse, depending on circumstances. 

    More concretely, when the United States trades semiconductors for Asian t-shirts, for example, that is trade in the narrow sense. And we concur with the most basic theoretical conclusion that this exchange clearly benefits both countries. But when Intel properly pursues the interests of its shareholders by building a multi-billion dollar semiconductor plant in China rather than the United States, a shift in comparative productive capability suddenly occurs. Globalization is not simply free trade; it is trade plus shifting productivity. We have not sent China consumer goods, but the capability to produce more effectively.

    基于什么樣的推理,自由貿易支持者可以斷言,全球化有損國家利益?一個簡單的解釋就足夠了.  在貿易的標準化分析中,經濟學家通過給一個國家的生產能力賦予一個固定值,而把貿易定義為商品與服務的交換,這樣每個提供這些商品和服務項目的國家其生產能力都被最大化.這樣的定義之下,貿易更容易就被顯示為對雙方都是有利的. 經濟分析就是不斷地證明這種互利.因此,經濟學家特別強調地不駁斥關稅和其它有礙這些互利實現的保護措施. 在假定條件下我們接受這個結論. 但由于生產能力是變化的, 世界進入一場全新的比賽中. 如同長久以來被許多經濟學家所證實, 最近的一次證實來自諾貝爾獎金得主鮑爾. 薩繆爾森，這種生產能力最終會改變,即使是調整期過后,可以更有利于一個國家,也可能進一步惡化,這取決于當時的環境條件.

    更具體一些來說,當美國用半導體與非洲T恤進行貿易交換時,這是狹義上的貿易. 我們同意最基本的理論性結論,這種交換明顯對兩個國家均有利.但是,當英特爾公司為正當追求自己股東的利益而在中國建立一個數十億美金投入的半導體工廠,而不是在美國廠時,相對生產能力就突然發生改變了. 全球化不是簡單的自由貿易,它是貿易+生產能力的改變. 我們沒有向中國輸送消費品,但擁有更有效生產消費品的能力.