Not that rethinking free trade is anything new - economists and social scientists have always found a variety of different angles from which to examine the issues linked to free trade.

What will be different now is that we will be hearing more about this rethinking in the news, Businessweek’s article “Economists Rethink Free Trade” marking a sort of turning point in current thought:

But something momentous is happening inside the church of free trade: Doubts are creeping in. We’re not talking wholesale, dramatic repudiation of the theory. Economists are, however, noting that their ideas can’t explain the disturbing stagnation in income that much of the middle class is experiencing. They also fear a protectionist backlash unless more is done to help those who are losing out. “Previously, you just had extremists making extravagant claims against trade,” says Gary C. Hufbauer, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. “Now there are broader questions being raised that would not have been asked 10 or 15 years ago.”

While I do understand how free trade does provide benefits in the aggregate by leveraging the power of comparative advantage, the economic models we use do not necessarily capture the nuance of the real world.
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