James K. Galbraith has stated that "free trade has attained the status of a god" and that " ... none of the world's most successful trading regions, including Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and now mainland China, reached their current status by adopting neoliberal trading rules." [..] These comments have been heavily criticized by mainstream academics like Paul Krugman, who noted the lack of mathematical modeling or simulations supporting the argument -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage#Criticis...

Imagine criticizing an empirical result on the basis that simulations don't support it. In other sciences, it's the other way around - if the simulation differs from the experiment, it's the simulation that's considered faulty.

I guess economists think their simulations are so perfect and complete, such good representations of a system as complicated as human behavior and society, that any result disagreing with those simulations must be due to experimental error.

Edit as reply to the question of whether Japan, Korea, Taiwan, China reached their status "without utilizing free trade":

They utilized trade, but not completely free, unrestricted trade. I'm sure we're all aware of China's historic and current protectionist policies. Western countries also used and still use various "protectionist" policies (e.g. corn subsidies in the US), they just try to be subtle about it. That's what was meant by "neoliberal trading rules".