In this review, we present a systematic survey of the academic literature in economics that identify – with a sound statistical methodology – the impact of international trade and trade liberalization policies on socio-economic variables that are related to sustainable development. As a point of departure, we acknowledge the widely accepted finding that international trade is a key ingredient for economic growth in developing countries, as documented by Winters and Martuscelli (2014). Therefore, we do exclude the literature on the effect of trade openness on economic growth, which has been summarized elsewhere (Singh, 2010; Winters et al., 2004; Winters and Martuscelli, 2014), and focus exclusively on the more social-related and sustainable-related goals.