Like most of you I take safety, comfort, and a clean environment as givens. A recent trip to Nicaragua reminded me they are not. (Nicaragua is the second poorest country in the western hemisphere. Only Haiti is poorer). My trip offered several take home messages. Here’s one.

I have a wristband that reads, “I buy goods from poorer countries.” I thought about it a lot as I traveled through a country slowly recovering from decades of economic mismanagement. The protectionist trade policies that compounded problems are only now being dismantled. Everywhere and always protectionism produces high unemployment, high consumer prices, and inefficient domestic industries. The poor suffer most.

People engage in trade because it makes both parties better off. If it didn’t, no trade would occur. The U.S. trades to obtain goods and services that other countries can produce at a relatively lower cost. In exchange, the U.S. sells goods and services that we produce at a lower cost than other countries. In short, we are better off when we “do what we do best and trade for the rest.”

Princeton economist Alan Blinder, former advisor to Al Gore and John Kerry, reinforces this maxim. “…many of us have our shirts laundered at professional cleaners rather than wash and iron them ourselves. Anyone who advised us to ‘protect’ ourselves from the ‘unfair competition’ of low-paid laundry workers by doing our own wash would be thought looney.”

Nations that open their markets to global trade quickly find out what goods and services their people can produce better than anyone else. This discovery process drives economic progress.

Some of the world’s poorest counties, e.g., India, China, and Indonesia, have embraced trade. One result is that they are now enjoying some of the world’s fastest economic growth. Indeed, many low- and middle-income countries are growing faster than those in the developed world. Global inequality is declining faster than at any other time in human history.

One way to make sure this continues is for the developed world to open its markets to the goods that many poor countries are best at producing, e.g., food and textiles. Unfortunately, high U.S. and European tariffs often block access for highly competitive Latin American goods, e.g., sugar, citrus, and beef.

Global trade is opposed by wealthy activists claiming to want to help the poor. They assert (contrary to all evidence) that voluntary exchange between people living in different countries makes them worse off. If people are better off without international trade, won’t they be even better off if they refrain from trading with people in other states or in the next county or town?

It’s clear that foreign trade will eliminate some domestic jobs. However, others will replace these lost jobs. For example, a century ago the portion of the U.S. labor force working in agriculture was about 35 percent; today it’s less than 2. Where did all these workers go? They migrated to good paying jobs in other areas, becoming salesmen, teachers, and doctors.

We see that when we buy cheaper foreign goods, Americans in the competing domestic industries lose jobs. Unseen is the power of foreign competition to induce domestic industries to innovate. Unseen are the opportunities and jobs created in the other sectors of the economy where American skills and creativity produce the best products in the world. (In the decade of the 90s, both American imports and exports doubled. Over the same period, 17 million new U.S. jobs were created.)

Back to my wristband. A decade ago the Miami Herald interviewed Nicaraguan garment worker Candida Rosa Lopez. She was concerned about rich U.S. college kids boycotting the clothes made in her factory. Here was her plea. “Sometimes, at the end of the year, the factory doesn’t have enough orders. Then we can’t work as many hours, or make as much money. I wish more people would buy the clothes we make.” Candida’s next best alternative employment is much worse than spending long hours at a sewing machine.

Buying goods from poorer countries hastens economic development. To believe otherwise plays a cruel hoax on people like Candida. Email me if you’d like to know how to get a wristband.