The Causes of Poverty (37): Lack of Trade Liberalization

I’ve argued before that doing away with trade restrictions (especially in the agricultural sector) – such as subsidies (like the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy), import duties and other protectionist measures – would be a boost to the global struggle against poverty. Free and unsubsidized trade reduces poverty in at least three ways:

• It brings down prices because of increased specialization, competition and comparative advantage. Although the removal of subsidies (only one element of trade liberalization) would initially raise prices and hence also poverty levels in importing countries, over time this would be compensated by the downward pressure created by specialization, increased competition and comparative advantage. However, these importing countries wouldn’t be the poorest ones: “three-quarters of the world’s poor live in rural areas, with the majority of them depending directly or indirectly on agriculture for their livelihoods” (source). The poorest countries would benefit from initial price rises caused by the removal of subsidies. (That doesn’t mean that everyone in the poorest countries would benefit: non-farm workers may suffer).
• It opens up foreign markets for poor producers.
• It eliminates distortions of competition between local producers and foreign, subsidized products, distortions which often force local producers out of business.

All this has a positive effect on the income of the poor. There’s a new paper here arguing that the net effect of trade liberalization is a reduction of the number of poor people worldwide by 3%:

the winners from trade reform would include poorer countries and the poorest individuals within countries. Nevertheless, it is also clear that even among the extreme poor, some would lose.

Of course, and again: beware of the silver-bullet fallacy. Domestic anti-poverty policies continue to be important as well.