While the bigger companies were profiting off cheap Chinese assembly lines and access to the Chinese market, smaller and midsized manufacturers were getting creamed by competition with the country’s cheap imports.

“The reality [is] that the consumer who enjoys the low prices of imported goods is also a worker who must withstand the downward pressures that come from competing with workers in other parts of the world toiling under exploitative conditions. Our world is different now,” U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai said in June.

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