September 22, 2010 12:17PM # Trade Can Help the Poor Escape Poverty By [Marian L. Tupy](https://www.cato.org/people/marian-l-tupy) --- SHARE Professor William Easterly, the economic development expert from New York University, has written an excellent [comment](http://blogs.ft.com/beyond-brics/2010/09/21/guest-post-only-trade-fuelled-growth-can-help-the-worlds-poor/) for the *Financial Times* online. He writes, “The Millennium Development Goals \[summit that wraps up in NY today\] tragically misused the world’s goodwill to support failed official aid approaches to global poverty and gave virtually no support to proven approaches. … But current experience and history both speak loudly that the only real engine of growth out of poverty is private business, and there is no evidence that aid fuels such growth.” At the Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity, we have continuously [emphasized](https://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=5236) the power of trade to help the poor escape poverty. Unfortunately, politicians in rich countries find it easier to waste billions of taxpayers’ dollars in the form of foreign aid than to take on special interests that thrive on trade protectionism; hence European and American agricultural tariffs and subsidies. However, the impact of rich countries’ protectionism should not be exaggerated. African countries are typically more protectionist than rich countries. In fact, they are more protectionist against one another than against rich countries. The sad truth is that poor countries are perfectly able to shoot themselves in the foot by following growth-killing economic policies – irrespective of what the rich countries do. Foreign aid, incidentally, has been ineffective at promoting liberalization. ##### Related Tags [Trade Policy](https://www.cato.org/trade-policy), [Herbert A. Stiefel Center for Trade Policy Studies](https://www.cato.org/herbert-stiefel-center-trade-policy-studies) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).