Asked about his blueprint for winning the Cold War with the Soviet Union, Ronald Reagan had a succinct response. “Here’s my strategy,” Reagan said. “We win, they lose.”

A strategy geared to international conflicts may be ill-suited for international commerce, or the voluntary exchange among nations. Yet Donald Trump seems to be channeling his inner Gipper with his misplaced, zero-sum-game approach to trade.

On the campaign trail, the Republican presidential nominee never misses an opportunity to incite audiences by telling them that the U.S. ran an $800 billion trade deficit last year. (The 2015 annual deficit was $500 billion.) Trump reiterates, as he did at Sunday’s second presidential debate, that foreign countries are stealing our businesses, our wealth and our jobs. He, and he alone, will be able to bring them back.

“ With trade, there are winners and losers in the short run, but in the end, nations benefit from the free flow of goods and services. ”

Let me break it to you gently, Mr. Trump: Those jobs aren’t coming back. T-shirt manufacturers will not be relocating to North Carolina, once the center of textile and apparel manufacturing in the U.S. Those jobs are best left to developing nations, whose competitive advantage is in producing low-end goods. Besides, many of those jobs have been lost to automation, not China.

The start of the American Revolution in 1776 coincided with the publication of Adam Smith’s “Wealth of Nations,” which upended mercantilist theory. Economists of all political persuasions understand the benefits of free trade, even if some nations impose protectionist barriers. (Trump economic adviser Peter Navarro may be the exception.)

The entire premise of mercantilist theory makes no sense. In a world of scarce resources, why would a country choose to use those resources, and the required expenditure of time and labor, to manufacture goods for another nation? It is imports, not exports, that make us better off.

Trade with other countries allows consumers to choose among a wide variety of high-quality goods at the lowest possible price. Trump ignores the effect of tariffs, which would raise the price consumers pay for finished goods and the price producers pay for the crude and intermediate materials used in finished goods. Besides, tariffs are most harmful to the poor, who spend most of their income on consumption goods.

Trade encourages competition, which drives innovation as companies strive to become more productive. The least productive companies will fail; the most productive will have opportunities to expand their markets. Trade leads to a more efficient allocation of resources, resulting in increased output and productivity and higher real wages for workers.

Are there losers with free trade? In the short run, yes. Workers are displaced when businesses close domestic plants and relocate factories overseas. Economists like to say that the costs of trade — shuttered plants, devastated communities, unemployed factory workers — are immediately visible while the benefits are diffuse and harder to identify. That doesn’t mean the benefits are less significant.

“Economic theory and historical evidence suggest that the diffuse and long-term benefits of international trade have outweighed the concentrated short-term costs,” according to a recent paper from the Congressional Budget Office: “How Preferential Trade Agreements Affect the U.S. Economy.”

Public policy has a role to play, not by impeding free trade but by providing displaced workers with the necessary education and training to pursue an alternate line of work. That’s where the U.S. should direct its efforts: not by imposing tariffs, as Trump would do, or by penalizing companies that relocate overseas, something advocated by Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.

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Listening to Trump, I often wonder if he understands that there is another side to a trade deficit: a capital account surplus. The dollars that go to China, Mexico and India in exchange for low-cost imports find their way back to the U.S. as foreign direct investment. In other words, reducing the trade deficit comes at a cost.

Which is why Trump’s view that trade is a zero-sum-game — we win, they lose — is so narrow-minded. There are winners and losers in the short run, but in the end, nations benefit from the free flow of goods and services. Historically, world trade was always a positive contributor to world growth.

Between 1950 and 2008, world trade increased three times as fast as global gross domestic product, according to London’s Centre for Economic Policy Research. Trade slowed during the Great Recession and is still limping along, growing slower than global output. Trump’s threatened tariffs on imports from China and Mexico would dampen both trade and growth.

And as for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade agreement among 12 Pacific Rim nations that both Trump and Clinton oppose, you have to wonder why the treaty runs to more than 5,000 pages. A true free-trade agreement would be simple and concise, not something that dictates the signatories’ regulatory policies or imposes advanced economy labor standards on developing nations.

A real free-trade agreement would read something like this: We eliminate our tariffs and subsidies, you eliminate yours.

Or, to borrow from Reagan: We win, you win, no one loses.

Caroline Baum writes about economics for MarketWatch.