During the past decades, extensive literature has empha￾sized the role of both international trade and openness in fostering economic growth. Endogeneity bias is a nagging challenge for any empirical attempt to study the causal rela￾tionship between trade and economic growth. This study contributes to the existing stock of knowledge and helps to address these challenges by introducing new instrumen￾tal variables for trade. The study samples 197 countries over 1970–2020. The findings suggest that international trade has a positive and significant effect on gross domestic product per capita, which tends to be higher for emerging markets and development economies. Thus, the study pro￾vides an enhanced empirical foundation for the expectation that investments made to support trade are also good for economic growth, especially in emerging markets.