In nearly 200 years of its existence no one has been able to refute it. That is why anti-free trade fanatics like Stratchan resort to slander and deliberate distortions. Regardless of one's view about free trade, there is no way that Stratchan's response can be seriously treated as a refutation. And this by a man who calls himself a scientist. Through debt for equity swaps, many countries no longer own or control the assets that might give them their comparative advantage.
Global capital does.
They struggle to compete in a climate of deteriorating terms of trade, getting further into debt and selling progressively more of their 'comparative advantage' to global capital. Stratchan combines economic illiteracy and political paranoia to an extraordinary degree. You cannot sell comparative advantage. It is a little known fact that the terms of trade for Japanese manufactures have been falling since the 1960s. Something that dreaded rationalist economics would predict.