Nah, this is yet another conservative think-tank dude [0] trying to desperately sane-wash the recent actions of the US Republican party.
Each of these various apologists asks us to have faith that their proposed grand and subtle clockwork plan is operating behind the scenes... by actively ignoring the incoherent [1] actions and statements coming out of this administration. No, we've already had 4 years of Trump, it's silly to suggest he had enlightenment into an economic idiot-savant while we weren't looking.
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[0] https://heartland.org/about-us/who-we-are/st-karnick/
[1] For example, when they claim (A) the taxes on imports would "replace" the Federal Income Tax with "6 trillion dollars" and also claim (B) the import taxes will quickly restore US manufacturing so that nobody does any importing to be taxed on. Occam's Razor: the simplest explanation is that a bullshitter is bullshitting.
Before the WTO, there were bilateral agreements between countries. After the WTO ground to a halt over the past decade, due to India and others, there were again bilateral agreements, then attempts at regional agreements like the TPP, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Pacific_Partnership and a parallel agreement among other Asian countries.
Setting aside short-term posturing, the best case going forward is trade agreements among groups of countries, to avoid the N-way combinatorial explosion of bilateral agreements among 100+ countries. That could be trading blocs anchored by US, China or other groups with complementary trade objectives.