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

Episode Date: February 24, 2026

President Trump has spent much of the past year trying to pump up international investment in U.S. factories. He's promised to bring back jobs that have moved overseas. WSJ’s Gavin Bade investigates a Chinese automotive glass plant in the Ohio heartland and explores the risks when America’s biggest rival sets up shop. Jessica Mendoza hosts.   Further Listening: - Trump's Tariffs Are Illegal. He's Got a Plan B. - How Tariffs Could End Italian Pasta in the U.S. - The Tariff Trade Off: Jobs vs. Higher Prices Sign up for WSJ’s free What’s News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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? 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. 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. They were really concerned about Chinese competition, not coming from overseas, but actually one that it's set up here in the U.S. That rival is called Fou Yao. It's a huge player in the global glassmaking industry. And when Fou Yao set up shop in Ohio, it quickly started to out-compete Vitro. What you're describing sounds like Chinese company moves into an American manufacturing town, starts its own factory, and out-does 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? In a big way, that is part of this story, right?

And that's certainly what the Fou Yao 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? Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Jessica Mendoza. It's Tuesday, February 24th. Coming up on the show, how one Chinese company is disrupting American manufacturing in America's heartland. At Desjardin Insurance, we know that when you own a law firm, your bar for everything is high. That's why our agents go the extra mile to understand your business and provide tailored solutions for all its unique needs.

You put your heart into your company, so we put our heart into making sure it's protected. Get insurance that's really big on care. Find an agent today at Dejardin.com slash business coverage. 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 Creseline, Ohio, has been a mainstay in the local economy for decades, one of the last strongholds of the manufacturing era. Vitro is really a pillar of this very small town.

I mean, it's like 4,500 people, Crestline. This is, you know, one of the few sources of stable employment from year to year in this factory town. Gavin says walking into Vitro's plant is like going back in time. It was almost kind of a throwback to the old 20th century model 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 service. And you just hear the, you know, the clank and grind of all of these, like, you know, very industrial-aged 20th century machines going on. And it's union. This is UAW. They've got good pay. They've got good benefits. They've got good time off.

And they're proud of their work. You know, they're really, really proud of what they do. For years, Vitro was the main glassmaking game in the area. But in 2016, that's a lot of. started to change. The Chinese-based company Fouiao 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. Fou Yao took over a former General Motors plant and turned it into a glass factory. 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 right for disruption. They thought they could do well here, and they were right. And how did the community react to Fou Yao coming to town? Everyone was all in on this, and it was a, you know, on paper, it looked like a great idea. And if you ask people who have jobs there, they, you know, obviously they like getting paid. They like having a job. And so there was a lot to be gained by Fuyahu coming to this area, for sure. The new factory was also welcomed by politicians from both parties, like Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown, and Ohio's then governor, Republican John Kasich.

That the building is opening again, and we have work. And tomorrow is going to be better for our family and for our community. In the years that followed, Fou Yao 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 volume drop by 50% in the past seven years. Vitro executives told Gavin, they started to notice some bigger problems with Fouiao almost

from the get-go. 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, 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 Fuyahu factory and its labor force, right? Dozens of workers, presumably of Chinese origin, stuffed into 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, and there are concerns about just how many people are crammed into these places. After five years of investigating, DHS eventually raided the Fuyau plant in 2024. Tonight, a massive investigation in our area led by Homeland Security Special Agents. Today's search warrants were executed at Fuyall Glass America in 27. A civil complaint filed by federal authorities last year, alleges that Fou Yao's Chinese business funneled $126 million to a web of dozens of commercial enterprises in Ohio. According to the federal complaint, what the Fou Yao 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. A Fou Yao spokeswoman said all employees at Fou Yao were authorized to work in the U.S. and that the investigation targeted its suppliers, not Fuyau. And what about the allegations about the workers? Did they find evidence of people working illegally? 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 roles for Fou Yao 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? According to the Fuyahu 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 Fou Yao.

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. 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. That's after the break. Last month, Trump spoke at an event in Detroit.

He made it clear he welcomes foreign businesses opening up shop in the U.S. Let China come in, let Japan come in. They are. And they'll be building plants, but they're using our labor. The idea is that these foreign companies could add jobs back into stagnant local economies. They want to come in and build the plant and hire you and hire your friends and your neighbors. That's great. I love that.

From Fou Yao's view, that is what they're doing. The company says its Ohio plant employs more than 3,000 workers, most of them from the area. But Vichro says Fou Yao's presence in the region has, undercut Vitro's ability to keep stable union jobs. In addition to the allegations that Fou Yao employs undocumented workers, there are also concerns about Beijing subsidizing Fouiao's operations to give them the upper hand in pricing. The Vintra people are pulling their hair out.

They feel like they're getting cheated out of the market here. They're really trying to adapt to this new competitive environment, but they feel like Fuyau is not playing out the same game that they are. The Fuyahu spokeswoman said that the company's success is due to its product quality and reliability. And at least one local leader is dismissive of Vitro's complaints. The head of the Dayton area Chamber of Commerce

said Vitro may just be, quote, peeved that they're losing market share, and maybe they're grasping at straws. Still, Vitro's argument is resonating among China Hawks in Washington. What's happening with Fou Yao, China Hawks say, is internal dumping, a company not shipping product from another country,

but locating here in the United States, and then pricing their price, their products so low that they push out all the competition. So rather than importing lowly priced goods, they are creating them here and pushing out existing competition. There's a related national security concern as well, especially as tensions between the U.S. and China ratchet up. What vitro and what other China hawks in Washington will say is there's a broader issue

with Chinese companies investing in critical sectors in the United States, even if they aren't doing human trafficking, right? The automotive sector has been identified as a sector that is critical to national security, not just by the Trump administration, but governments, administrations before, right? Now you have a Chinese company that, however they're doing it, they're getting a dominant position in a critical part of this very important industry. And the worry is, is that if there is a conflagration between the U.S. and China, Beijing can just tell Fou Yao, stop supplying these American companies. and really can mess up the automotive supply chain.

Are we seeing this in other industries currently or beyond just sort of fuyow in vitro? It's happening in fits and starts, but there are Chinese companies looking in particular sectors to expand their footprint, right? One of them is in the copper sector right now. That is a copper industry also identified as a national security imperative by the Trump administration, right? And the thing is, is that, oh, if Trump wants to tout this big deal with Xi Jinping, well, maybe this happens a lot faster in the years to come. So it sounds like there's a bit of tension in Trump's trade policy here. He wants countries to make their stuff here in the U.S., but then there's also concern about them controlling the market with low prices. Yeah, absolutely. I think there's particularly on China, there's a big divide here because the president himself, every time he's asked about it, says, I would love more Chinese companies to come in here. I would love investment. I mean, this is a big policy debate. How do you do this? Do you just say no Chinese investment in the U.S.? I think that's a pretty extreme position for a lot of people even in Washington these days? Can you beef up your screening of Chinese investments? Do you just block them from particular sectors that you've identified as critical to national security? That seems rather extreme as well because that list of sectors seems to expand every year, right? It used to just be, you know, we were talking steel, aluminum, copper, semiconductors,

cars, trucks, critical minerals, all of the things that Trump has sought to protect with his national security tariffs. I mean, now we're talking about most of the industrial economy. And so this is something that the administration is chewing over and trying to consider. A White House spokesman said that the administration is committed to securing more investment in American manufacturing without compromising on national and economic security. For Vitro and its plant in Cresline, Ohio, the long-term future is still uncertain. Vitro executives announced that the plant would remain open through the year, but the company is still struggling to compete.

Meanwhile, Fuyahu has continued to expand. What is the lesson here? What is it showing about the risks to inviting foreign manufacturing, specifically Chinese manufacturing into the U.S.? I think it's a be careful what you wish for thing. These Chinese companies, well, first of all, you know, they are just really, really good at manufacturing. They are very efficient.

They work their people really hard. They pay them less than the U.S. does in many cases. And if you let that economic model in, that model is going to clash with the model of the vitro plant, which is more unionized, higher wages, more benefits, you know. And the other thing is, is just that the Chinese companies are operating under a different economic model, this non-market economy that they come from, it's not as important for them. to show profitability as quickly, right? They are not going to have the same financing hiccups that other people do.

That's how the argument from the China Hawks goes. That's all for today, Tuesday, February 24th. The Journal is a co-production of Spotify and the Wall Street Journal. If you like our show, follow us on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. We're out every weekday afternoon. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow.