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> still sell their goods for less than U.S. companies paid in material costs

I don’t get how this part is possible. How are the Chinese paying less than the Americans for imported wood?

Same way that they pay less to send mail to the USA than people in the US pay to send mail domestically (but not the reverse); through treaties and long-standing trade agreements that provide opportunities for arbitrage by outsourcing things that developed countries don't necessarily want to be directly involved in. And that includes dealing with labour unions, if they become too militant or resistant to modernisation.

Do Chinese companies have less trouble with labor unions? I thought communists are all about that stuff

Unions are restricted to certain industries, and they are basically all controlled by the government, so that puts an upper limit on the amount of "trouble" in industrial relations. Much of the country is in a "developing" state, and there is competition for jobs in the cities. The pre-1980s weren't that long ago in the collective consciousness, and while policies and initiatives may have changed, the same people are in charge.

This is a _very_ funny question

Why not? They call themselves communist but are pretty aggressively capitalist in most ways...

State manipulation of the market.

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