Imagine it’s your birthday and you’ve invited your neighbors, Fred and Barney, to your party. Barney brings you a dazzling gift: a giant flat screen TV. Fred brings nothing, consumes a bunch of your beer and pizza, and heads out the door.

Who’s the better guest, Fred or Barney? If you’re Kenny Perdue, president of the West Virginia AFL-CIO, the answer is Fred—at least, according to Perdue’s recent Herald-Mail op-ed.[1] In it, Perdue demands that Congress reject expanded trade between the United States and other Pacific countries. He and other trade critics apparently believe that Americans are harmed when we receive things that we value a lot in exchange for things we value less, while we benefit from other people taking our valuable stuff.

Don’t see how that follows from Perdue’s op-ed? I’ll explain.

Voluntary trade—whether it’s between a worker in Boonsboro and me or a worker in Brunei and me—should always benefit both traders. If I’m the buyer, then the worker provides me with something I value in exchange for something she values: money. The worker and I are both made better off: if I valued the money more than the worker’s product, I wouldn’t make the exchange; if the worker valued her product (or the time she spent making it) more than the money I’m offering, she wouldn’t trade.

Perdue and other anti-traders would likely agree with that. But, they’d say, there’s a difference between my trading with the worker in Boonsboro and the worker in Brunei: in the latter case, the money I pay leaves the country, hurting America.

But it’s unclear how those departing dollars hurt. Whether my money goes to Brunei or Boonsboro, only three things can happen to it. In two cases, it goes back into the American economy: either the worker uses it to buy American goods (which, ultimately, is what American dollars are for) or she invests or lends it to America and the recipient buys U.S. goods.

What about the third case, when the dollars don’t come back? What if the worker—whether in Boonsboro or Brunei—tosses them into her closet and never uses them again? In that case, she’s just like Barney: she’s given me something of value, and in return she receives practically nothing: some green paper that she stacks in her closet. So if Barney’s giving me a TV is a good thing, then how can the Brunei (or Boonsboro) worker’s giving Americans valuable goods in exchange for unused dollars be a bad thing? After all, it’s not like America is going to run out of dollars; the Federal Reserve has a tremendous ability to make new ones, as it’s shown in recent years.

Perdue and the other anti-traders would probably grudgingly admit that. But, they’d say, my buying from the Brunei worker is bad because her competition could hurt the Boonsboro worker’s job. Yet the Boonsboro worker’s job could also be hurt if I buy from a Hancock worker or a Smithsburg worker. Nearly all job losses in the American economy are because of domestic factors—competition from other American workers, or poor management, or changing consumer tastes—and not foreign trade.

The most outlandish estimates of American job losses from imports, “offshoring” and “outsourcing” are between 300,000 and 500,000 a year.[2] Yet in the typical year, the American economy loses between 26 and 30 million private-sector jobs.[3] That is, even if the anti-trade estimates are right, only 1–5 percent of U.S. job losses are because of trade, while 95–99 percent are for domestic reasons. So why is Perdue so much more vexed about jobs lost to Brunei than Smithsburg?

Besides that, the American private sector typically creates 28–32 million new jobs each year. That means all the lost jobs—including the tiny percentage of trade-related ones—are replaced and a couple million new ones are added each year.[4]

But, Perdue might say, the lost jobs from imports are good, middle-class jobs while the replacement jobs are bad, low-wage jobs. Yet think about the imported goods and services you encounter every day; far more of them are products of menial labor than high-skill, high-pay work. If Perdue thinks menial labor is the backbone of the U.S. middle class, then the U.S. economy had more grievous problems than foreign trade.

Besides, Americans benefit tremendously from foreign trade. Like Barney and his gift, trade delivers us a dazzling bounty of goods: foods that are out of season or completely unavailable; technologies that are unknown or underutilized by American companies; exotic goods produced by other cultures; foreign inputs that are used by high-skilled, well-compensated American workers; and price and quality competition that benefit American consumers and force domestic companies to do better.

So the next time you hear someone like Perdue bash foreign trade, think of all the benefits that it delivers. Think of the job numbers and other information in this column. And think, most of all, about who you want at your next party, Fred or Barney?

Thomas A. Firey is senior fellow for the Maryland Public Policy Institute and a native of Washington County.