ABSTRACT
Professor Samuelson believes this view to be wrong, in that it is not necessary for winnings to exceed losses, as he showed in his Nobel lecture of 1972 and elsewhere (Samuelson 1972). In fact, the reason the United States has benefited so much from trade in the recent past is that it had a wide advantage over other economies at the end of World War II in terms of its productive capacity, educational system, and other assets. Now that many countries have caught up, other outcomes are possible: for example, certain kinds of technical change in China relative to the US could generate net losses in US welfare over reasonably long periods, such as 10, 20 or even 30 years.
