Given the rising public concern, “we need more transparency, sensitivity, openness and time” to build public support for trade, Lamy said, arguing that opposition should not be caricatured as merely “Trotskyists or old-fashioned protectionists.”
“It’s a huge political mistake to cry wolf now. We just have to work harder to gain public legitimization for trade in the growing pressure,” he said. “Trade opening works because it hurts, and it hurts because it works.”
For 200 years, there have been two broad approaches to understanding what determines the distribution of income – and how the economy functions. It is important to understand both schools of thought, because rising inequality is forcing us to leave one and enter the other.