"Other governments/markets don't care?"

its the least of their problems

It's a very slow process, first there is investigations, then legislation, then enactment, then enforcement which is separately a very slow process. It requires a lot of willpower to get and keep the ball rolling and in fact nobody has even achieved the full extent of what they require yet! The EU may still be years away from meaningful compliance, Japan has only taken baby steps forming a new bureau just to enforce compliance of two companies widely accused of malicious compliance.

And then there is additional discouragement and pressure in the form of sanction and trade deal threats for regulating American tech platforms.

Who said it's cheaper?

It's vastly more profitable to maintain their monopoly on iOS apps and the 30% cut than to allow users to stop paying apple a cut of their transactions.

Any working way to spoof your locale to trick this into any form of usability?

> Apple has not approved any...

They've approved - at the very least - AltStore, Epic Games Store, Aptoide, Onside, and Setapp Mobile.