Going into the implications of the work of Criscuolo and Narula (2008), our second hypothesis states that developing countries may need a minimum technological innovation level to obtain trade gains derived from higher technological innovation achievements, whereas the already achieved technological innovation level in developed countries is sufficient to obtain trade gains from technological innovation developments. In relation to the related theories, the learning process may affect developed and developing countries differently since absorptive capacity increases diversity of knowledge in trading partners, and this diverse background provides a more robust basis for learning since it increases the prospect of external information relating to what is already known (Cohen and Levinthal 1990). This hypothesis is consistent with the results obtained in this paper, which shows a U-shaped relationship between the importer’s creation of technology (national acquisition capability) and trade and between the importer’s diffusion of recent innovations (national transformation capability) and trade when the importer is a developing country.