Trade, Poverty, and Inequality – Which issue to deal with first?

This post was produced for the Global Economic Symposium 2013. Read more at http://blog.global-economic-symposium.org/.

When I started blogging about “Trade, Poverty, and Inequality” three months ago for the GES 2013, I knew a lot about poverty and inequality as I had personally seen and heard a great many stories that showed the terrible impact that poverty and inequality can make on peoples’ lives. However, the term “trade” and how it was related to the other two terms posed some difficulties. So I started doing a lot of research before writing each post on Future Challenges, and in the course of my research I came across some pretty surprising facts.

A presentation slide from the session on “Trade, Poverty, and Inequality”.

Today after finally attending the session on “Trade, Poverty, and Inequality” at the GES 2013 and listening to what the professional experts from the field of economics have to say, I am now able to put my views on the issue in much simpler and clearer terms.

Below are some one-liners that sum up my understanding of the topic and also highlight the discussions on reducing poverty from the session itself.