(FORTUNE Magazine) – "No nation was ever ruined by trade." --Benjamin Franklin

You'd never know it if you read American newspapers, where international trade, when mentioned at all, is cast as controversial or even sinister, but Franklin's maxim is just as true today as it was in the 18th century. In fact, you can turn it around, state it more forcefully, and put it in the present tense, and it will still be true: Nearly all nations are being enriched by trade today.

You can go much further. How about this: In the past ten years free trade has done more to alleviate poverty than any well-intentioned law, regulation, or social policy in history. Sound too good to be true? Consider that in China and the rest of East Asia, more people rose out of poverty between 1990 and today than the entire current population of the U.S. "People will look back on the '90s as an incredible period of growth and catch-up for the developing nations," predicts Fordham University economist Darryl McLeod. Like China, he notes, India and Brazil also made huge advances in wealth. Those three nations alone account for almost 40% of the world's population.

True, not every region or every nation has benefited, and millions still live in appalling poverty. Growth in Africa has remained stubbornly low, and the "transition economies" (the former Soviet states and satellites) are still in economic limbo. But even with Africa included, per capita income (the broadest measure of financial well-being) grew at an average rate of 3.6% per year in the developing nations in the 1990s, double the 1.8% growth in the advanced economies (U.S. growth averaged 2.7%).

Although trade is the single biggest reason for the developing world's growing prosperity, it isn't the only one. The next biggest contributor--accounting for somewhere between a third and a half of per capita output growth--is slower population growth. But since rising income is a precursor of slowing population growth, this too flows at least in part from the rising prosperity that accompanies increases in trade.

So why is it that world trade and its corollary, globalization, get so little respect? A recent poll by the Pew Research Center found that 43% of Americans think the global economy would help the average citizen in years to come; 52% said it would hurt. Not exactly as popular as cherry pie.

One reason is that the little that Americans hear about trade tends to be bad news. Think back over the trade-related headlines of the past few years. You may recall something about disputes between farmers in the U.S. and Europe. You'll remember the East Asian financial crisis of 1998. But the most potent image that pops to mind is the mayhem in Seattle in December, when a meeting of the World Trade Organization was disrupted by masked thugs who smashed up parts of downtown Seattle to protest "globalization"--watched with varying degrees of dismay by an unlikely carnival of special-interest protesters, from labor unionists and environmentalists and farmers to animal-rights activists and supporters of the Zapatista rebels in Mexico.

This odd coalition came together in the '90s as a new gallimaufry of special interests aligned itself with the traditional opponent of free trade, the trade union movement. The unions want to impose American-style labor requirements (and wages) on developing nations; their new anti-trade allies--such as environmentalists and human-rights activists--have little quarrel with trade itself, but have learned that they can use trade issues to dramatize and potentially redress their own grievances.

The unions and their strange bedfellows have been surprisingly effective. They fought successfully in 1997 against the so-called fast-track authority that for decades had given the White House power to negotiate trade treaties. In 1998 they blocked two smaller trade initiatives. This year they prevailed on President Clinton to propose that labor and environmental issues be discussed at future international trade negotiations. When the other WTO members balked, the talks fell apart.

Since Seattle, policy wonks have been warning that the future of free trade is in doubt. But the volume of world trade has grown so briskly--6.5% on average in the 1990s--and the benefits of free trade are so obvious in places like China and India that it's hard to take such warnings seriously. If future trade initiatives are stymied by domestic special interests, the U.S. may find itself becoming marginalized, but the global march toward free trade--and away from poverty--will continue.