Images of Trade

Abstract

This chapter introduces the images-terminology used throughout the book and addresses Amoral Trade, Instrumental Trade, and Structural Equity, three competitors to the image the book adopts. Amoral Trade is the view that trade is an interaction among a myriad of individuals that does not let trade come up for (much) moral assessment in the first place. Instrumental Trade does give moral significance to trade, but only to the extent that trade helps with the pursuit of other goals. According to Structural Equity, each state may remove from the totality of trade gains what it could generate in autarky and the remaining surplus is divided equally among participating states. The chapter rejects these images and then introduces its own image, Trade-As-One-Ground, and offers some initial arguments for it.