Miracles and Debacles: Do Free-trade Skeptics have a Case?

• There is no sustained growth without low and/or declining barriers to trade. • Sustained rapid growth has almost never missed the poor. While there is a role for targeted poverty-reduction programs, the best hope of the poor remains sustained rapid growth. 1 The author is Jagdish Bhagwati Professor of Indian Political Economy & Professor of Economics at Columbia University. Work on this paper was begun when the author was the V.K.R.V. Rao Professor, Institute for Social and Economic Change, Bangalore, India (April 2002-March 2003) and completed when he was a Resident Scholar at the International Monetary Fund (September-December 2003). Thanks are due to Jagdish Bhagwati, Alan Deardorff, Douglas Irwin, Ashoka Mody, Ratna Sahay and Maurice Schiff for many helpful suggestions on an earlier draft. Table of