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Why embracing freer trade could be our best chance to help the world's poor

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City A.M. a large business focused newspaper based in London has printed Bjorn Lomborg’s op-ed entitled “Why embracing freer trade could be our best chance to help the world’s poor.”  The article discusses the findings from our assessment paper on Trade targets for the post-2015 agenda. 

Analysis shows that there would be substantial rewards for completing the Doha round. The direct economic benefits would be a 1.1 per cent increase in global GDP. This sounds modest. But because it would impact the entire world economy, by 2030 we would be about $1.5 trillion richer every year.

But open economies also grow faster. In the last 50 years, countries as diverse as South Korea, Chile and India have seen their rate of growth shoot up by 1.5 per cent per annum on average, shortly after liberalisation. If Doha can be completed, it is estimated that the global economy will grow by an extra 0.6 per cent for the next few decades. By 2030, such dynamic growth would make the world economy $11.5 trillion larger each year, leaving us 10 per cent more resources to fix all other problems.

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