Via Greg Mankiw, I see that Economist Robert Driskill asks this question in an article in Foreign Policy:
What if free trade is making a small percentage of the country much better off, but is hurting a much greater percentage (the “Joe Sixpacks”), as some argue is the case?
Here's my question: Who is arguing that this is the case, and what exactly is it that they are arguing? I thought it was generally accepted, even among most trade critics, that consumers as a whole benefit from free trade, whereas some producers (and their employees) will lose. The result, of course, is that everyone benefits a little bit, whereas a small fraction of people are hurt (although on an individual basis these people are likely to be hurt more than individual consumers benefit). This is very different than what is suggested in the article, and I'm not quite sure what the author has mind.
