It had to come to this. After Spiegel people had already verbally confronted the evil trade spoiler Trump and the Süddeutsche Zeitung called for 200 years of trade doctrine to be heeded, a second Spiegel man was now allowed to write an ‘essay’ trashing the evil Trump. Once again, 200 years of economic wisdom had to serve as a basis, as did poor David Ricardo, who will probably never be understood.

If Spiegel had read what Trumps most important advisor had written in the Financial Times, it could have made a serious argument. But who wants to read, and in English in the Financial Times? Spiegel writers already know everything anyway. Peter Navarro could have taught them that this is not about trade as such. But the Spiegel-Author, who is after all a ‘trained economist,’ apparently just wants to bash Trump and does not bother to engage with serious arguments in his essay.

It’s always the same pattern. I have been writing about international trade for fifty years and, of course, about the balances – the surpluses and deficits – that often arise. I have always emphasised, as Navarro does, that David Ricardo and the other free traders assumed in their deductions that trade would remain largely balance-free because the international monetary system (at that time the gold standard) ensured that countries with deficits devalued their currencies and the currencies of countries with surpluses appreciated, so that the balances were not permanent.

Since no such mechanism exists today, there is no classical trade theory to fund the assertion that everyone benefits. There are winners and losers from the outset because the balances are a zero-sum game. The world’s current account balance is zero. If someone has a surplus, someone else must have a deficit. If someone improves their competitiveness, someone else must lose competitiveness. Those who improve and have a surplus gain jobs and income, while those who lose competitiveness and have a deficit lose out.

Didn’t Germany praise the red-green coalition’s agenda policy to the skies? Wasn’t it precisely this policy that was responsible for the swelling of the German surplus, because Germany was effectively devaluing within the monetary union but could no longer revalue in isolation? Isn’t improving competitiveness the biggest mantra in this coalition too? How stupid do you have to be to strive with all your might to improve your own competitiveness while believing that the losers will shut up forever and admire ‘German successes’?

But German economists and their scribblers are not bothered by this. In the fifty years that I have been writing against trade naivety, I have received what feels like a hundred replies from the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, always with the same phrase: international trade is not a zero-sum game. However, no one has ever claimed that it is. It has always been and always will be about the balance. That is how it is now with Trump. He says that the American foreign trade deficit is intolerable, and the free trade ideologues of every country on earth respond in unison: Trump is a fool, because international trade benefits everyone. Bravo, this kind of idiotic response makes friends around the world.

Recently, the neoclassical circles have come up with a wonderful explanation for the balances, which of course also appears in Der Spiegel. One side simply wants deficits and the other wants surpluses. One side is the born consumer, the other the born producer. Because Germany simply wanted surpluses in the 2000s, it got them. But that is so ridiculous that it is not worth explaining again. I dealt with it here.

Trade is like many other things: Whenever things get difficult and unpleasant, there is a tendency, especially in Germany, to construct a world of arguments that has nothing to do with the fundamental problem, but which finds such broad support in the media and in politics that anyone who claims anything different is immediately labelled a ‘heretic’, ‘conspiracy theorist’ or even a ‘denier’ and never mentioned again. This has always been the case, but the ranks of the ‘good and the righteous’ are becoming increasingly closed. But beware! As with some natural phenomena, there is a tipping point at which society starts to slide down a slippery slope and cannot be stopped before it completely loses its ability to engage in serious discussion. The end point is then called fascism.

Incidentally, the nice story told in Der Spiegel, according to which even the weak have a chance in international trade because it is not absolute advantages that matter, but only so-called comparative advantages, is also wrong. But that is another story. Why not read a book about that.