This man from Alabama is single-handedly waging an economic war against China

A Leeds businessman who runs an 80-year-old company has been single-handedly battling Chinese manufacturers, case by case, for two decades to save his business.

Milton Magnus, president of M&B Hangers, was the subject of a Wall Street Journal article about his 20-year battle against Chinese manufacturers who he said were trying to circumvent tariffs designed to protect his line of business.

“It's been years of struggle, trying different things to hopefully save our business,” Magnus told the newspaper.

M&B Hangers is one of the last remaining manufacturers of steel wire hangers in the United States. The company was founded in 1943 by Magnus' grandfather and Roy Brekle. The two previously worked for Pepsi, but left to start a company that refurbished used bottle caps and sold them to the soft drink industry. They switched to steel hangers when a dry cleaner told them they were in short supply because of the war.

Milton III took over from his father, Milton Jr., after his father retired in the 1980s, but the rise of Chinese trade began to hurt the family business.

Magnus first testified on the subject of Chinese coat hangers before a federal agency analyzing trade issues in 2003.

The US Department of Commerce responded in 2008 by imposing tariffs of up to 187 percent on Chinese hangers. Magnus had filed an “anti-dumping” lawsuit claiming that Chinese manufacturers were exporting hangers at a lower price than they were sold for in China.

But that was just the beginning. Soon, Chinese-made hangers from Taiwan, Vietnam, Thailand and other Asian countries began arriving in U.S. ports.

Magnus hired private investigators to investigate the shipments, the newspaper reported. Congress later passed the Enforce and Protect Act, which allows customs evasion charges to be filed with U.S. Customs and Border Protection against American hanger importers.

“It's like a roller coaster ride. We file a trade dispute, demand for us soars, then there's a new way to get around it and demand drops,” Magnus told the Journal.

Magnus sources most of its steel wire from Illinois, Texas and Oklahoma and pays its workers between $15 and $23 an hour. The plant employs 50 people, about half the workforce it employed at its peak. It also produces about half as many hangers.