In the decades-long war over milk — with purveyors of cow juice on one side and the people who make an increasing array of ecru-colored plant- and nut-based drinks on the other — this is as close to consorting with the enemy as it gets.

Vans, the 52-year-old brand best known for its unassuming slip-on sneaker, is on a tear. Vans' annual revenue topped $3bn last year, up nearly tenfold from a decade earlier, propelled in part by cheap and plentiful manufacturing in Asia.

When a Mexican company bought Mid Continent Nail Corp. in 2012, workers at the factory in Poplar Bluff, Missouri, feared it was the beginning of the end. Their jobs, they suspected, would be given to lower-paid workers in Mexico, more casualties of the hollowing out of U.S. manufacturing driven in part by an embrace of global trade.

To the Air Force, it’s a “cover-center wall, troop compartment latrine ... required to protect the aircraft from corrosion damage in the latrine area.”