World Trade Is Not a Zero-Sum Game, but a Negative-Sum Game.

This reality is too often underestimated.

Movements in commodity prices act like the croupier in a global casino: they redistribute the cards of income flows between economies at high speed. These flows are materialized by changes in the balances of current payments.

Without trading with space, the trade deficits of some are the surpluses of others. On a global scale, this redistribution of the …