First, it would be "lack of trade" (not lack of the trade). As for your question, yes, there are two forms of the word "trade". One is non-countable (the one used here) and the other is countable(one trade, two trades). Here we need the non-countable form because we are talking about commerce, business. Whenever "trade" means commerce or business, it is non-countable ("Trade is picking up between China and the U.S." "The country is trying to promote more trade.") and it is used without an article (no "the" or "a"). The countable form of the word ("a trade," "trades") refers to individual exchanges that (unlike the non-countable form) do NOT involve money. A sports team might trade one of their players to another team for a player from that team. In that case, we would say, "The team made a good/bad trade."