![]() Despite their foreign origins, which I’d been mostly unaware of at the time of purchase, nearly all of these items bore the brand names of familiar American companies that, like the makers of Donald Trump’s men’s fashion line, had outsourced production to cheap overseas factories. Even the wristwatch I was wearing that day consisted of a Japanese quartz movement housed in a Chinese case with an “alligator” strap of unknown - but almost certainly non-American and non-reptilian - provenance. It dawned on me that, on that particular morning, I was wearing underwear made in Canada, an Oxford cotton shirt produced in India, heather-brown trousers from Bangladesh, a tweedy sports jacket “assembled” in Honduras, a Chinese necktie, and suede wingtips made in Brazil. My moment of revelation came, not after immersing myself in balance of payment and jobless statistics, but while getting dressed. ![]() On a crisp November morning last year, when Donald Trump’s candidacy was little more than a cloud the size of a man’s fist - and the fist of a man with tiny hands, at that - it occurred to me that if it ever did take off, a lot of its success would be due to his strongly protectionist stance on global trade.
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