[curiosity]

Samuelson and Stolper actually acknowledged that over-all, countries benefited from being more open to trade...they just were of the opinion that there would be losers as well.

Yes, that's the thrust of this paper. Some countries can win and other countries can lose as a result of free trade. I don't think he's denying that on net there is more output generated as a result of free trade. Frankly, if we are on the losing end, it does not make me any happier that the winners could subsidize the losers, because in the real world such subsidies never materialize. That's why we should be conducting a trade policy to maximize our income, not China's or Japans or Mexico's or Europe's.

[LowCountryJoe]

They never came to the conclusion that any country would be the loser. In fact, all countries win. It's what happened to the various industries (they phrased it as factors of production being utilized...land, labor, capital) within the trading companies that created the winers and losers. Therefore the subsidization was internal to each participating country.