On March 5th 2025, my research on David Ricardo's theory of comparative advantageLink opens in a new window was cited in a Financial Times article assessing the current inadequacy of the response to Trump's threatened global tariff regime. The article is written by Nat Dyer, and it is called 'What economists get wrong about tariff wars: The history of global trade challenges Ricardo's enduring economic theoryLink opens in a new window'. Nat's argument is that, wrongheaded though Trump's obsession with tariffs might be, the answer does not lie in citing an unhistoricised account of Ricardo's theory of comparative advantage back at him. He has been able to tap into broader societal perceptions that trade is not the global level playing field that the theory suggests, and he has appropriated that discontent into a self-serving critique of so-called globalist elites. It is impossible to oppose the Trump agenda, Nat concludes, if Ricardo's abstract theory is used solely to endorse the position that Trump accuses the globalist elites of adopting. He very generously credits me with showing how the debate about that theory can be properly historicised to point to the oppressive social relations of production that Ricardo hid from view in his supposedly universal models of the benefits of free trade.