You probably didn’t hear much about a trade meeting that wrapped up in Cameroon last month. That’s understandable. What happened there, or more precisely what didn’t happen, affects your paycheck, your job and the prices you pay for almost everything.

The short version: the World Trade Organization (WTO), the body supposedly responsible for keeping global trade fair, failed again. Members couldn’t agree on even modest reforms. It was the latest in a long line of similar failures, and it matters because the current system has been allowing foreign governments to quietly cheat for decades — and American workers have been paying the price.

Here’s how the cheating works. It’s not just tariffs. Those are the taxes countries charge on imported goods. The bigger problem is what happens behind closed doors.

Foreign governments, China foremost among them, have spent years designing their economies to crush outside competition. They subsidize their own industries so heavily that American manufacturers literally cannot compete on price. They flood global markets with artificially cheap steel, solar panels, electronics and other goods, wiping out American factories and........

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