first and foremost the generally attractive results in terms of poverty and inequality alleviating effects from trade policy reforms whether unilateral or multilateral provide yet another reason as to why it is in the interests of countries to seek further liberalization of national and world markets according to the indonesia study for example unilateral trade liberalization is expected to reduce poverty only very slightly but liberalization by the rest of the world is expected to lower poverty very substantially in the philippines domestic reform alone from current levels of protection might marginally increase poverty rates whereas restofworld liberalization would almost fully offset that and more than offset it in the case of only agricultural reform