It’s more of a prisoners dilemma than “it works when implemented correctly.”
In general, all parties do better in freer markets and all parties do poorly in restricted markets. However, when one party in a trading system implements restrictions and the others don’t that party can gain outsized benefits versus others.
The world spent almost 50 years liberalizing trade systems, mostly with benefits at the national scale. It took 10-15 years for most of leaders to realize that China was successfully subverting the liberal system.
“it works when implemented correctly” is the wrong lessons and will lead us to widespread protectionism and make us all poorer.
The right lesson is that “bad actors need to be dealt with and excluded from the system.”
„It works when implemented correctly“ might not be the lesson you want others to learn. But looking at China, boy did it work for them.
Once you start dealing with bad actors, you'd have to kick out pretty much anybody. Did western europe played fairly with post-cold-war eastern europe? No. I hear South america have issues with US too.
In reality this works great for established powers to keep status quo. For the rest... It depends on how many rules you're willing to bend. Or how others go above-and-beyond to help you out for some reason that is not part of the system.
In general, all parties do better in freer markets and all parties do poorly in restricted markets. However, when one party in a trading system implements restrictions and the others don’t that party can gain outsized benefits versus others.
The world spent almost 50 years liberalizing trade systems, mostly with benefits at the national scale. It took 10-15 years for most of leaders to realize that China was successfully subverting the liberal system.
“it works when implemented correctly” is the wrong lessons and will lead us to widespread protectionism and make us all poorer.
The right lesson is that “bad actors need to be dealt with and excluded from the system.”