Many years ago I was involved in the ladies clothing industry. We used hundreds of thousands of zippers every year, which we bought from Talon zippers, an American company. Talon supplied about 70% of the world’s zippers.

Then along came a sales representative from YKK, a Japanese company. They had copied the Talon zipper and were selling them for about 1/3 less than Talon.

We knew that if we, and other manufacturers, switched to YKK then eventually Talon would go out of business. But we also knew that we would be uncompetitive if we didn’t. So we switched.

In 1993 Talon closed down, putting their workers out of a job.

The same scenario has been repeated thousands of times over as western manufacturers have closed their factories and lost out to China.

The result has been cheaper goods, at least short-term, and lower wages for former western factory workers.