Summary

Opponents of the upcoming duties feared that they would be increased after the annual review which would essentially end most Chinese imports. Such an outcome would challenge the domestic supply chain and would not bring back any jobs. The free traders reminded the petitioners that globalization was an eventuality and that standing in its way would only temporarily delay it. John suspected that some of the retailers didn’t pass the savings from cheaper Chinese products onto their customers but pocketed it instead. John went to work designing new lines of furniture to compete with manufacturers who were big importers of Chinese products. The new lines were made efficiently and quickly and became John’s best seller for six years.

Between 2001 and 2012, over 63,000 American factories closed and five million factory jobs were lost. The national unemployment rate was 5.2 percent but as Tom Friedman...