USBusiness I dealt with just closed down. They took their molds for product for production in China and the partner factory basically just stole the molds and told them they would not produce product for them.
Same thing happened with a company I was with. A proprietary and unique production process was outsourced to a Chinese company. The US engineers set it up, there was a written agreement protecting the intellectual property as well as guaranteeing the US supplier of the patented specialized production machinery would outfit the factory.
The equipment order never came. The Chinese factory used the training machines to knock off the patented production machine and quickly produced hundreds of the machines. When we complained, they canceled our orders and discontinued doing business with our company. Within 10 months the factory was full producing product for a competitor using our process. My company learned the lesson there is no intellectual property or contact law enforcement in China for foreign companies. Of course the US government was no help and our Congress critter who voted 100% for free trade legislation had nothing to say.
This is the reality of free trade. However academics, politicians, Wall Street bankers, and corporate executives keep telling us a free trade policy will bring us economic prosperity. All we need is a few more “free trade” agreements like the one Obama is currently negotiating with Europe.. After 25 years I’m still waiting for the prosperity promised by the free trade lobby. No doubt millions of unemployed American citizens who would like to have the factory jobs exported to Asia are getting tired of waiting.