When the manufacturers in a given country are slower to adopt new technologies than their foreign competitors are, their production costs will fall more slowly than their foreign competitors' costs will
But if manufacturers' production costs fall less rapidly than their foreign competitors' costs do, those manufacturers will be unable to lower their prices as rapidly as their foreign competitors can; and when a country' s manufacturers cannot lower their prices as rapidly as their foreign competitors can, that country gets squeezed out of the global market
If a country's manufacturers can lower their prices as rapidly as their foreign competitors can, this shows that they adopt new technology at least as fast as their foreign competitors do.