[VHRanger]

Right, but this is a political problem. H-O (or Ricardian trade) is about the simplest model of trade you can come up with to show the concept.

It's not like economists don't know there are problems in distribution of wealth -- one of the most discussed papers last year (see these podcasts [1] [2]) talks about the effects of China massively expanding trade with the US in early 2000s on some parts of the country.

Pretty much everyone has known for half a century what trade does, there's a political and logistical problem in redistribution, though (counties tend to get devastated, and people don't like to move).

Interestingly, trade has extremely similar labor market effects to automation.

[1] http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2016/03/david_autor_on_1.ht...

[2] http://freakonomics.com/podcast/china-eat-americas-jobs/