Many optimistic figures on poverty reduction as a result of trade liberalization do not survive even casual scrutiny. For a start, the World Bank standard for poverty is $2 a day, so "moving a million people out of poverty" can merely consist in moving a million people from incomes of $1.99 a day to $2.01 a day. In one widely-cited study, there were only two nations in which the average beneficiary jumped from less than $1.88 to more than $2.13: Pakistan and Thailand. Every other nation was making minor jumps in between. This is better than nothing, but still small stuff to set against the costs of trade liberalization. It is definitely not the qualitative jump from material misery to a decent standard of living that people imagine from the phrase "lift out of poverty."

The developing world's projected gains from trade liberalization are also concentrated in a relatively small group of nations, due to the fact that only a few developing nations have economies that are actually capable of taking advantage of freer trade to any meaningful extent. Although it depends a bit on the model, China, India, Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Vietnam, and Turkey generally take the lion's share. This list sounds impressive, but it actually leaves out most Third World nations. Dirt-poor nations like Haiti aren't even on the radar. Even nations one notch up the scale, like Bolivia, barely figure.

Like it or not, this is perfectly logical, as increased access to the ruthlessly competitive global marketplace (which is all free trade provides) benefits only nations whose industries have something to sell which foreign trade barriers are currently keeping out. Their industries must both be strong enough to be globally competitive and have pent-up potential due to trade barriers abroad, a fairly rare combination. So the most desperately impoverished nations, which have few or no internationally competitive industries, have little to gain.