The notion of comparative advantage that's presented in the article is a little facile though. IMO there are quite a number of real-world practicalities that de

The notion of comparative advantage that's presented in the article is a little facile though. IMO there are quite a number of real-world practicalities that derail the analysis: * The infant industry argument. The analysis in TFA assumes comparative advantage is fixed: in reality advantage shifts all the time. Fifty years ago China had a comparative advantage in farming and not much else. * Measuring comparative advantage: in order to make a good policy recommendation, we don't just know what each country does produce, we need to know how much each country could produce under a huge range of scenarios. Does anyone honestly know how much value a given country could produce if it decided to shift its entire economy in a new direction? * Mobility of labour: instead of trading with other countries, why not just allow their workers to work in your country and reap the benefits at home? (I recognise that some advantages don't come directly from labour, but we do see this happen in low-skilled jobs). Even Ricardo recognised that labour mobility hurt his argument. For what it's worth, I'm not saying that trade doesn't usually benefit both parties: I'm saying that _this argument_ isn't the smoking gun that demonstrates that fact.