Memo to poor countries: trade barriers hurt you most.(Forward Observer: Politics meets economics)

Back in 2001, delegates from 148 countries met in Doha, Qatar to start a round of world trade negotiations with the "needs and interests" of developing countries "at the heart of" the effort. The talks, to put it kindly, have gone nowhere. I attended the two subsequent top-level bargaining sessions in Cancun in 2003 and in Hong Kong last December, and they proved time-wasting, expensive exercises in over-heated rhetoric, silly protest demonstrations, and overall futility.

Don't get me wrong: The Doha Round itself is a good idea. "International trade" as the 2001 declaration stated, "can play a major role in the promotion of economic development and the alleviation of poverty." Indeed, it can. Look at Singapore, and China.

Or look at Hong Kong, which decades ago, when it was poor, reduced nearly all its tariffs to zero. Today, Hong Kong enjoys per capita purchasing power equal to that of France and Germany. It's a glorious city, with nine skyscrapers over 70 stories tall.

Spurring growth and alleviating poverty in the developing world are among today's most pressing international problems. And the worst of it is we now know conclusively how to make deprivation go away: through the rule of law and economic liberalism, especially the mechanisms of low trade barriers, sensible regulation, and low taxes (the top personal income tax rate in Hong Kong is 16 percent, with no VAT or sales tax).

The best way to lower trade barriers is, as the Nike slogan says, just do it. Unilaterally. That was the Hong Kong approach. That was the Adam Smith approach. That is the Milton Friedman approach: A "fallacy seldom contradicted is that exports are good, imports are bad. The truth is very different. We cannot eat, wear, or enjoy the goods we send abroad.... Our gain from foreign trade is what we import."

Unfortunately, trade negotiations today are snarled in a terrible impasse by which Nation A refuses to open its market to Nation B unless Nation B opens its market to Nation A. This is the paradigm of arms reduction. But it makes little sense for trade. For developing countries in particular, most of the gains from free trade come not from forcing open the markets of richer countries, but from opening their own markets to a new variety of goods.

But the Doha Round is stalled because ...