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.”