The wisest grow-the-pie Democrats have also learned something from the past few years: The benefits of Nafta, open trade with China and the rise of the digital economy — while vital for creating economic growth — don’t just automatically trickle down, any more than G.O.P. tax cuts did. They require trade insurance and surge protectors, free community college, portable health care coverage and pensions, and a very intentional strategy to more equitably spread the benefits of growth among bosses, workers and shareholders.

Redivide-the-pie Democrats — think Bernie Sanders — argue that after four decades of stagnant middle-class wages — and bailouts for bankers and billionaires but not workers in 2008 — you can’t grow the pie without redividing it first. Inequality is too great now. There are too many people too far behind.

The decision by Amazon to scuttle its big expansion in New York City marks the first big clash this election season between grow-the-pie Democrats, who insisted that tax breaks for Amazon would pay for themselves, and redivide-the-pie Democrats, who saw Amazon as pitting their community in a race to the bottom with other communities over which could lavish more subsides on a tech behemoth that didn’t need them.

In truth, the episode was a huge failure of imagination by both sides. Virginia got it right, explained Amy Liu, urban affairs expert at the Brookings Institution, in an essay last week in The Times. Yes, it gave Amazon some $500 million in subsidies, but the state offered twice that amount in new investments in local transportation and schools to create a strong pipeline of technically skilled workers — something that will benefit the entire community for years.

As for the G.O.P., it’s divided between a “limited-government-grow-the-pie” right — but one that wants to just let capitalism rip — and a “hoard-the-pie, pull-up-the-drawbridge” Trump-led far right.

The limited-government-grow-the-pie faction is itself split between the Never Trumpers — who’ve refused to prostitute themselves to Trump’s serial lying, cozying up to Russia and other madness — and those who’ve hitched a ride on Trump’s wagon to get their tax cuts, conservative judges and deregulation.

But Trump’s decision to declare a “national emergency” on the Mexico border has violated the party’s most core principle of limited government. In doing so it’s opened a fissure between the old limited-government-grow-the-pie Republicans and the anti-immigrant hoard-the-pie, pull-up-the-drawbridge Trumpers.