2.8 billion people live on less than 2 dollars a day, barely enough for a Big Mac. Such extreme poverty is a tragedy and an outrage. The simple answer is that developing economies need to grow faster, and the poor need to share more in the fruits of economic growth. Cancelling Third World debt, for instance, will do little to improve the lives of the poor if governments squander their resources. Nor will abolishing trade barriers help much if countries are at war and farmers cannot get their crops to market.
Some people scoff at the argument that trade helps the poor.
They claim that trade benefits the rich at the expense of the poor. But the evidence tells a different story. It is well-established that trade boosts economic growth. Countless country studies support their results. Opponents of free trade retort that poor countries are still not catching up with rich ones, indeed that the rich are drawing further ahead.