A Chinese Glass Factory Opened in Ohio. Its Rivals Can’t Compete.

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0:33Rebecca Picciotto:The White House is having trouble convincing Congress to ban Wall Street from buying homes. Plus, President Trump wants other countries to invest in manufacturing in the U.S. What happens when that country is China?

0:45Gavin Bade:What China hawks in Washington would say is if you let companies that come from a non-market economy like China, that is going to hollow out American manufacturing from within.

0:55Rebecca Picciotto:And Ghislaine Maxwell takes the fifth today after questions from Congress. It's Monday, February 9th. I'm Alex Osula for The Wall Street Journal. This is the PM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories that move the world today.

1:16Rebecca Picciotto:The U.S. has captured another oil tanker after a month spent chasing it. U.S. forces tracked the ship from near Venezuela all the way to the Indian Ocean. It's the eighth sanctioned oil tanker U.S. forces have grabbed. Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein's longtime associate, today refused to answer questions from Congress. The House Oversight Committee is investigating how the government handled the Epstein case. Maxwell joined this morning's closed-door deposition virtually from prison.

1:43Gavin Bade:As expected, Ghislaine Maxwell took the fifth and refused to answer any questions. This obviously is very disappointing. We had many questions to ask about the crimes she and Epstein committed, as well as questions about potential co-conspirators. we sincerely want to get to the truth of the American people and justice for the survivors. That's what this investigation is about.

2:05Rebecca Picciotto:That's Republican Representative James Comer of Kentucky, the chair of the Oversight Committee. Maxwell is serving a 20-year prison sentence for helping recruit and groom underage girls. Her lawyer said Maxwell was prepared to speak if President Trump gave her clemency. Also on Capitol Hill, one of President Trump's signature housing proposals, a ban on Wall Street investors buying single-family homes, isn't going over so well. People familiar with the matter say the White House has pressured congressional Republicans in recent weeks to include the investor ban as an amendment in one of the two major housing bills currently working their way through the House and the Senate.

2:40Rebecca Picciotto:The House is set to vote on its bill as soon as tonight, and it's expected to pass with bipartisan support. The Senate passed a similar bill last fall. Rebecca Picciotto, who covers residential real estate for the journal, says lawmakers have been resistant.

2:52Gavin Bade:Congressional Republicans who are on the House Financial Services Committee and the Senate Banking Committee, committees that would need to approve any kind of amendment, they're still waiting on the White House to come up with definitions for institutional investor and single family home before they decide whether they're going to pursue legislation. The other thing is that there is just deep ideological opposition. You know, a lot of these traditional Republicans have like free market values and don't believe that the government should dictate what a business can or can't buy. The Wall Street investor ban that Trump is proposing has been long championed by some Democrats like Senator Elizabeth Warren.

3:29Gavin Bade:And so the idea of jumping into agreement with that side is not necessarily something that all of these congressional Republicans are getting on board for.

3:38Rebecca Picciotto:Rebecca says Congress has its own ideas about how to improve the housing market.

3:42Gavin Bade:If you look at both of the housing packages, the Housing for the 21st Century Act and the Road to Housing Act, both are really focused on spurring more housing, expanding housing finance options, and modernizing certain government housing programs. They both want to make it easier to build manufactured housing and streamline regulations like environmental reviews that historically have held up housing development and making it easier to build homes. This has not necessarily been the approach or at least the philosophy behind the proposals that Trump has put forward. He's dealing with this conundrum of wanting to boost affordability for a first-time homebuyer, but also realizing that that might require bringing down home values for existing homeowners.

4:24Gavin Bade:So his dilemma has pushed him to focus on kind of demand-side policies, but Congress is sort of squarely focused on supply-side solutions.

4:35Rebecca Picciotto:Coming up, what happens when a Chinese company sets up a factory in the U.S.? And where are markets today after the Dow hit 50 ,000 on Friday? That's after the break.

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5:23Rebecca Picciotto:Stocks climbed higher today after a rollercoaster ride last week that ended with the Dow topping 50 ,000. Today was quieter. The Dow added 20 points, while the Nasdaq rose 0.9%, and the S &P 500 added half a percent. Some reports to look out for this week that could influence trading are the delayed January jobs report on Wednesday and inflation data on Friday. Speaking of jobs, whether you're hiring, firing, looking for a promotion, or a new job, we'd love to hear your impressions of the labor market and track down questions for you. Email us a voice memo to wnpod at wsj.com or leave us a message at 212-416-4328.

6:02Rebecca Picciotto:Make sure to include your full name and location so we can use your comments on the show.

6:11Rebecca Picciotto:Novo Nordisk is escalating its fight against telehealth company Hims & Hers. This morning, we told you about how Hims & Hers dropped its plan to offer a knockoff Wagovi weight loss pill. Today, Novo filed a lawsuit accusing Hims & Hers of violating the patents covering its Ozempic and Wagovi drugs. Novo is trying to recapture momentum in the$70 billion weight loss drug market and trying to protect its business from companies that sell compounded versions of its drugs. Hims and Herz said the lawsuit assaults a well-established part of U.S. pharmacy practices. The company's shares fell 16 percent today, while Novo's rose more than 5 percent in Europe.

6:48Rebecca Picciotto:And grocery giant Kroger said former Walmart executive Greg Foran is its new CEO. Kroger had been searching for a permanent leader for almost a year. It's the biggest grocer in the U.S. by sales after Walmart, and has been focusing on keeping food costs down for customers by doing more promotions and expanding its cheaper private label products. Kroger's shares closed up 3.9%.

7:14Rebecca Picciotto:President Trump has been trying to get foreign companies to invest in U.S. manufacturing plants, promising to replace jobs lost to the global economy. But what happens if local industries can't compete? Two auto glass factories in Ohio are showing what could happen when America's biggest rival, China, sets up shop next door. Gavin Bade covers trade and industrial policy for the journal and visited Ohio to find out more. Gavin, your story focuses on the Fuyao plant in Moraine, Ohio, and the impact it's had on a competitor, Vitro, which has a plant about two and a half hours drive away. You went inside the Vitro plant.

7:48Rebecca Picciotto:What is it like there? What's the vibe?

7:50Gavin Bade:The vibe is very much kind of an old-style factory. this vitro plant dates back to the 1950s. It's been around a long time. You can see where all of the raw glass and huge slabs comes in and they get put on these conveyor belts to be cut into the shapes for all of your car windows. We've got string that keeps them separated so they don't scratch and it's almost like a cartridge for like a gun or something like that. We'll put the rack in and then our robot begins to grab those. So this is a plant that has really stood the test of time for decades. It's got a union workforce there in this small town called Crestline, and it's really facing an uncertain future here.

8:32Gavin Bade:Vitro, the Mexican company that owns it, they have closed down three other similar factories since 2019, largely because of competition from this Chinese company that instead of shipping all the glass across the water, they've just set up here.

8:48Rebecca Picciotto:How is Fuyao applying competitive pressure?

8:51Gavin Bade:The Fuyao people would say, well, it's just efficiencies and economies of scale. Their factory houses more than 10 times the workers that the vitro plant does. They got 3 ,000 people down there in Moraine. They took over a big closed General Motors factory and just installed all of the state-of-the-art glass manufacturing and cutting equipment. And so they would say, look, we're just better at making glass than these other older plants, and that's why we're competitive. Now, that's maybe not the whole story from the standpoint of the government and from their competitors like Vitro, right? There are also accusations of unfair trade and labor practices.

9:28Gavin Bade:So there's this big federal investigation into alleged human trafficking and illegal immigration to feed workers into this plant. The Fuyao plant was actually raided in July 2024 by DHS, by the FBI and other agencies. This is under the Biden administration. And they alleged that the owners of this factory and others created an intricate web of affiliates that were all aimed at creating a pipeline for illegal immigration and illegal labor to come to this plant. And then on top of that, you have concerns that, well, maybe this plant is perhaps getting subsidies from the Chinese government. Perhaps they're getting cheap financing from Chinese state banks.

10:09Gavin Bade:Perhaps they're playing a little bit of a different economic game from the companies that have been established in the U.S. for a long time.

10:16Rebecca Picciotto:And what does the company say about this?

10:19Gavin Bade:Fuyao says that, you know, none of these allegations of unfair labor practices or trade practices are legitimate. They say that all of their employees were legal to work in the U.S. It was all from their suppliers and that they say they're not the target of the investigation. The Chinese embassy says Chinese companies make investments and employ a lot of people in the U.S. So it's also worth mentioning that Fuyao, of course, employs a lot of people in Ohio. And if you listen to business leaders there, they really welcome their presence.

10:47Rebecca Picciotto:Right. How generalizable is this really? I mean, is this a typical kind of dynamic where you have a local manufacturing setup and then a Chinese rival comes in? Like, can we see more of this coming? We could.

11:00Gavin Bade:Foreign direct investment from China into the U.S. really fell off a cliff since 2018. But we are seeing some places where they did get a toehold. We also see some interest from Chinese companies in investing in some other sectors, whether that's copper mining and processing or looking at getting into the automotive sector more broadly. And we've also seen President Trump at least verbally welcome that, right? He said just last month when he was speaking to the Detroit Economic Club, he said, let China in, let them invest in factories, let them create jobs here. Well, that is a double-edged sword, so to speak.

11:34Gavin Bade:What China hawks in Washington would say is, if you let companies that come from a non-market economy like China, that is going to hollow out American manufacturing from within.

11:44Rebecca Picciotto:That was WSJ reporter Gavin Bade. Gavin, thank you so much.

11:48Gavin Bade:Always a pleasure, Alex. Thank you.

11:53Rebecca Picciotto:And finally, it's the Monday after the Super Bowl. So if your office is anything like ours, everyone is talking about the ads. Besides the toilet humor and heavy dose of nostalgia, like, did we really need not one but two ads featuring the Backstreet Boys? Anyway, AI companies stole the show. OpenAI, Anthropic, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon all showcased their latest products. But based on how viewers reacted online and in polls, those ads didn't do as well as spots from Budweiser and Dunkin'. And that's what's news for this Monday afternoon. Today's show is produced by Pierre Bien-Aimé with supervising producer Tali Arbel.

12:29Rebecca Picciotto:I'm Alex Osula for The Wall Street Journal. We'll be back with a new show tomorrow morning. Thanks for listening.

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