The study further estimates that free trade could reduce the number of people in global poverty (earning less than $2 per day) by about 500 million over 15 years. This would cut the world poverty level by an additional 25 percent. Agricultural liberalization alone contributes about half of these gains. Cline judges that the developing countries were right to risk collapse of the Doha Round at the Cancún ministerial meeting in September 2003 by insisting on much deeper liberalization of agriculture than the industrial countries were then willing to offer.
The study calls for a two-track strategy. The first track is deep multilateral liberalization involving phased but complete elimination of protection by industrial countries and deep reduction of protection by at least the middle-income developing countries, albeit on a more gradual schedule. The second track is immediate free entry for imports from "high risk" low-income countries (heavily indebted poor countries, least developed countries, and sub-Saharan Africa), coupled with a 10-year tax holiday for direct investment in these countries.
