Bill Chan had never set foot anywhere in Mexico, let alone the lonely stretch of desert in the north of the country where he abruptly decided to build a $300 million factory. But that seemed a trifling detail amid the pressure to adapt to a swiftly changing global economy.It was January 2022, and Mr. Chan’s company, Man Wah Furniture Manufacturing, was confronting grave challenges in moving sofas from its factories in China to customers in the United States. Shipping prices were skyrocketing. Washington and Beijing were locked in a fierce trade war.Man Wah, one of China’s largest furniture companies, was eager to make its products on the North American side of the Pacific.“Our main market is the United States,” said Mr. Chan, chief executive of Man Wah’s Mexico subsidiary. “We don’t want to lose that market.”That same objective explains why scores of major Chinese …
