(A) fair exchange is no robbery [closed]

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A fair exchange is no robbery

Swapping two things or subjects of equal value is considered an honest deal.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fair_exchange_is_no_robbery

However, according to Microsoft Encarta (2009)

Fair exchange: a deal or trade at a price that the buyer and the seller are both happy with

Therefore, isn't fair exchange part of the true (BrE?) meaning of the transparently sum-of-parts expression (a) fair exchange is no robbery?

Later a friend said to me "Why did you swap? Isn't your cow worth more than his pig? He's cheated you!" But I replied "Fair exchange is no robbery."

Question 2

The proverb is a tautology. Many other proverbs are trivially true: "Christmas comes but once a year." "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." and so on.

The point of "stating the obvious", in the example, is to emphasise that "it is possible to make a deal". This fact is not tautologous. Moreover, if you have agreed a deal, you can't later complain about it.

So if someone is complaining about a contract that they agreed to, you can say this to mean "If you thought it was unfair, you shouldn't have agreed to it." Alternatively if a person is refusing to make a contract at any price, you can use this idiom to mean "You should reflect on what the actual value of the item is to you."