A Chinese Manufacturer Came to Ohio. Its Rivals Are Struggling to Compete.

0:05Jessica Mendoza:One of President Trump's top economic priorities has long been to have more stuff made in America. Our colleague Gavin Bade has been following that effort. And you're usually reporting from here in Washington, D.C. What brought you to Ohio?

0:21Gavin Bade:You know, one of the things that we do as reporters is you meet with businesses and you see about what is the manufacturing economy like. I started talking to a company that was saying we may have to close down some auto glass plants in Ohio.

0:34Jessica Mendoza:The company Gavin talked to is called Vitro. Vitro is a multinational glass company with plants all over the U.S., including a crucial auto glass factory outside Columbus, Ohio. And Gavin says that recently that factory has been facing a crisis.

0:53Gavin Bade:They were really concerned about Chinese competition, not coming from overseas, but actually one that had set up here in the U.S.

1:01Jessica Mendoza:That rival is called Fuyao. It's a huge player in the global glassmaking industry. And when Fuyao set up shop in Ohio, it quickly started to outcompete Vitro. What you're describing sounds like Chinese company moves into an American manufacturing town, starts its own factory, and outdoes the factory that's been there for much longer. It's not great for Vitro in this case, but isn't that just how competition works?

1:30Gavin Bade:In a big way, that is part of this story, right? And that's certainly what the Fuyao people would say and also kind of some of their allies. But this story is about the risks to U.S. industry when Chinese investment comes to town. When you allow a Chinese company that comes from a non-market economy to get a toehold in the U.S. And what happens when they are more efficient and allegedly not playing by the same rules.

1:59Jessica Mendoza:Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Jessica Mendoza. It's Tuesday, February 24th.

2:12Jessica Mendoza:Coming up on the show, how one Chinese company is disrupting American manufacturing in America's heartland.

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4:02Jessica Mendoza:Vitro is the largest glassmaker in North America. It's headquartered in Mexico, but it has factories everywhere from Pennsylvania to Kentucky. And its auto glass factory in Crestline, Ohio, has been a mainstay in the local economy for decades, one of the last strongholds of the manufacturing era.

4:20Gavin Bade:Vitro is really a pillar of this very small town. I mean, it's like 4 ,500 people across the line. This is, you know, one of the few sources of stable employment from year to year in this factory town.

4:33Jessica Mendoza:Gavin says walking into Vitro's plant is like going back in time.

4:37Gavin Bade:It was almost kind of a throwback to the old 20th century motto of industrial employment. There are, you know, old assembly lines, people, you know, putting glass into machines by hand, people inspecting the glass windows. That's exactly the principle of these, underneath the glass. So when it breaks it, it's a nice, clean break. So then when you go to grind it, it's a smooth surface. And you just hear the, you know, the clink and grind of all of these, like, you know, very industrial-age 20th century machines going on. And it's union. This is UAW. They've got good pay. They've got good benefits.

5:13Gavin Bade:They've got good time off. And they're proud of their work. You know, they're really, really proud of what they do.

5:21Jessica Mendoza:For years, Vitro was the main glassmaking game in the area. But in 2016, that started to change. The Chinese-based company Fuyao Glass Industry is starting their first North American glass manufacturing facility in Moraine. The company is expected to bring about 800 jobs over the next five years. Fuyao took over a former General Motors plant and turned it into a glass factory.

5:45Gavin Bade:So you've got a ready-made industrial site. You have a state that really wants the investment that's going to give you tax breaks to make an investment here. And you have a sector that, from their perspective, is ripe for disruption. They thought they could do well here, and they were right.

6:00Jessica Mendoza:And how did the community react to Fuyao coming to town?

6:03Gavin Bade:Everyone was all in on this, and it was, you know, on paper, it looked like a great idea. And if you ask people who have jobs there, obviously they like getting paid. They like having a job. And so there was a lot to be gained by Fuyao coming to this area, for sure.

6:19Jessica Mendoza:The new factory was also welcomed by politicians from both parties, like Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown and Ohio's then-governor, Republican John Kasich.

6:30Gavin Bade:That the building is opening again, and we have work. And tomorrow is going to be better for our family and for our community.

6:40Jessica Mendoza:In the years that followed, Fuyao appeared to thrive. The company ate up market share in the local glass industry, selling products at much lower prices than its competitors, including Vitro. The plant manager at the Vitro factory in Crestline said that they saw their volume drop by 50 % in the past seven years. Vitro executives told Gavin they started to notice some bigger problems with Fuyao almost from the get-go.

7:06Gavin Bade:Probably, you know, 2018, 2019, there started to be concerns from what I can tell. But the federal investigation in this matter dates back to 2019, where the feds, and this is, you know, DHS, the Homeland Security Investigation arm, they start tracking the workers who are coming to this plant. Some people around Dayton who were seeing some curious things about the Fuyao factory and its labor force, right? Dozens of workers, presumably of Chinese origin, stuffed into, you know, what the federal complaint calls family-style hotels. They're coming and going all hours of the day and night. There are concerns about the sanitation there.

7:44Gavin Bade:And there are concerns about just how many people are crammed into these places.

7:49Jessica Mendoza:After five years of investigating, DHS eventually raided the Fuyao plant in 2024.

7:55Gavin Bade:Tonight, a massive investigation in our area led by Homeland Security special agents. Today's search warrants were executed at Fuyao Glass America in 2017.

8:03Jessica Mendoza:A civil complaint filed by federal authorities last year alleges that Fuyao's Chinese business funneled$126 million to a web of dozens of commercial enterprises in Ohio.

8:20Gavin Bade:According to the federal complaint, what the Fuyao business owners did was create this pipeline to import, house, and employ undocumented labor at this auto glass factory. obviously because they are not going to pay them as much as you would pay a documented person and certainly not as much as a UAW union-represented person at the vitro factory. So it's all about—it's all a cost-savings ploy here.

8:49Jessica Mendoza:A Fuyao spokeswoman said all employees at Fuyao were authorized to work in the U.S. and that the investigation targeted its suppliers, not Fuyao. And what about the allegations about the workers? Did they find evidence of people working illegally?

9:04Gavin Bade:no one's been criminally charged in this case. I could not find if there were any people who were deported because of that raid in particular, right? So the thing with the raid was a number of people who were undocumented and were on the rolls for Fuyao or their suppliers just didn't come to work that day. And of the people, the federal complaint says, of the people who were absent that day, the vast majority were undocumented when they looked them up. But who knows where they're at now?

9:35Jessica Mendoza:According to the Fuyao spokeswoman, the company has since beefed up the vetting process for new hires among its suppliers. Ultimately, the federal investigation came to a standstill. Meanwhile, Vitro continued to lose out to Fuyao. It seemed to Vitro that no matter what it did at its Crestline factory, lay off workers, lower prices, invest in new equipment, the Chinese company kept eating into its sales. The situation grew so dire that Vitro considered closing the auto glass plant. Eventually, Vitro decided to make its case to Congress.

10:10Gavin Bade:So Vitro, when they start to see that this investigation is maybe stalled or it's not coming to a conclusion very quickly, they get involved in Washington and they start, you know, pressing on the members of Congress who have Vitro plants, right? So they're pushing hard on members of Congress and the Trump administration and, you know, trying to get their story in the press so that they can get more attention to this.

10:34Jessica Mendoza:That's after the break.

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11:55Jessica Mendoza:Last month, Trump spoke at an event in Detroit. He made it clear he welcomes foreign businesses opening up shop in the U.S.

12:02Gavin Bade:Let China come in, let Japan come in. They are. And they'll be building plants, but they're using our labor.

12:09Jessica Mendoza:The idea is that these foreign companies could add jobs back into stagnant local economies.

12:15Gavin Bade:If they want to come in and build a plant and hire you and hire your friends and your neighbors, that's great. I love that.