This nifty note by Bajona, Gibson, Kehoe, and Ruhl points out that there may be little connection between real GDP and welfare; in fact, welfare-improving trade liberalization may lower measured real GDP. Here’s a simple example in the Heckscher-Ohlin setting:

The intuition behind the decrease in measured real GDP for the autarky to free trade scenario is simple: given factor endowments, the base-year production pattern in country i is the optimal production pattern for country i at the base year prices among all feasible production plans… Any deviation from that production pattern will lower the value of production at those prices.