Globalization and trade have lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. Will tariffs end that?
is an editorial director at Vox overseeing the climate, tech, and world teams, and is the editor of Vox's Future Perfect section. He worked at Time magazine for 15 years as a foreign correspondent in Asia, a climate writer, and an international editor, and he wrote a book on existential risk. A version of this story originally appeared in the Good News newsletter. Sign up here! Back in 2022, sunglasses-wearing U2 frontman and rock star philanthropist Bono gave one of those long interviews to the New York Times Magazine. In between talking about his band's new albums and the challenge of staying relevant after nearly 50 years in the music business, Bono mused on what he's learned in his decades as an activist for the global poor: I thought that if we just redistributed resources, then we could solve every problem. I now know that's not true. There's a funny moment when you realize that as an activist: The off-ramp out of extreme poverty is, ugh, commerce, it's entrepreneurial capitalism. The statement "ugh, commerce," coming from a rock star with an estimated net worth of $700 million is a little, what's the word, rich. But whatever you think about Bono — and personally I'm still ride or die for Achtung, Baby — he's right that trade and capitalism have been perhaps the most important factor behind the sharp historical decline in global poverty. With the world now on the brink of an unprecedented trade war thanks to President Donald Trump's tariffs, it's more important than ever before to appreciate the progress we've made — and just what drove it. The second-most important number in the world If the remarkable decline of child mortality is the most important number in the world, as I wrote a couple of weeks ago, then the sharp decline in extreme poverty might be the second-most important. There are a few lessons in this chart. One, extreme, grinding poverty — here defined as living on the equivalent of $1.90 a day or less — was not just more common in the…