Real casualties in trade wars


A garment market in Guangzhou, China. — Qilai Shen/The New York Times

AFTER fighting in the Vietnam War, Richard May returned to the United States and enrolled in business school, where an economics class made a big impression on him.

He learned about British economist David Ricardo’s 19th-century theory of comparative advantage, the idea that a nation should specialise in what it does best and trade with others for everything else.

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