> "none of [...] reached their current status by adopting neoliberal trading rules" and? what's the counterfactual? what would have happened otherwise? tradin

> "none of [...] reached their current status by adopting neoliberal trading rules" and? what's the counterfactual? what would have happened otherwise? trading is important, but politics is the critical factor. trading provides the inflow of wealth, if it gets allocated in a way that inequality just keeps rising, then the beneficiaries will eventually capture the state and then revert/regress to whatever anti-competitive shit they will think of to enrich themselves. the problem with neoliberal policies is that they are not enforced, and what we got on a global scale is libertarian idgaf-ism. WTO members should have loudly levied serious tariffs on China (and others) who don't reciprocate the various policies required for doing business as foreigners.