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

Summary

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

Date: February 24, 2026
Hosts: Jessica Mendoza, Ryan Knutson
Reporter: Gavin Bade

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Episode Overview

This episode explores the disruptive impact of a Chinese auto glass manufacturer, Fuyao, opening a factory in Ohio and the resulting challenges faced by its local rival, Vitro. The story reveals the complexities of foreign investment—especially from China—into the American manufacturing sector, touching on themes of competition, labor practices, national security, and U.S. economic policy.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Vitro: A Pillar of Local Manufacturing

• Background: Vitro is the largest glassmaker in North America, with key factories across the U.S. Its Crestline, Ohio plant has long been a major, stable employer in the small town (03:34).
• Culture: The plant is described as a unionized stronghold, “almost kind of a throwback to the old 20th century model of industrial employment” (04:10, Gavin Bade). Workers are proud of their jobs, with good pay and benefits, under UAW representation.

2. The Arrival of Fuyao

• Event: In 2016, Fuyao, a massive Chinese company, opened a major glass factory in Moraine, Ohio, at a site formerly run by General Motors (04:54-05:17).
• Community Reaction: The investment was welcomed by both the local community and politicians from both parties, seen as a boost to jobs and economic prospects (05:32-06:02).
  • Memorable Moment: “Everyone was all in on this...it looked like a great idea.” (05:35, Gavin Bade)

3. Out-Competing the Locals

• Market Impact: Fuyao rapidly gained market share, undercutting Vitro’s prices and causing Vitro’s volume to fall by 50% in seven years (06:12).
  • Vitro Struggles: Even as Vitro laid off workers, lowered prices, and invested in new equipment, it couldn’t stop Fuyao from eroding its business (09:07).

4. Allegations and Federal Investigation

• Labor Concerns: Around 2018–2019, federal officials began investigating suspicious labor practices at Fuyao: “dozens of workers, presumably of Chinese origin, stuffed into...family style hotels...concerns about sanitation...how many people are crammed into these places” (06:38, Gavin Bade).
• DHS Raid: In 2024, Homeland Security raided the Fuyao plant, probing alleged use of undocumented labor through a $126 million network of shell companies (07:22–07:52).
  • Vitro’s View: "It's all a cost savings ploy here.” (07:52, Gavin Bade)
• Fuyao’s Response: The company claimed all workers were authorized, with issues pinned on suppliers. No criminal charges have resulted, and the investigation has “come to a standstill” (08:21–09:07).

5. Washington Politics & Broader Implications

• Vitro’s Lobbying: With little progress from investigators, Vitro turned to Congress, seeking policy or regulatory help to level the playing field (09:42).
• Trump’s Policy Tension: President Trump has both welcomed foreign manufacturers and expressed concern about letting them dominate local industries (10:35–10:47).
  • Quote: “Let China come in...they’ll be building plants, but they’re using our labor.” (10:35, Donald Trump)
  • Quote: “If they want to come in and build the plant and hire you and your neighbors, that’s great. I love that.” (10:47, Donald Trump)
• National Security: China hawks argue that “internal dumping”—undercutting U.S. companies via locally produced, subsidized goods—threatens not just jobs but supply chain security if tensions escalate with China (11:52–13:10).
  • Quote: “They are creating [cheap products] here and pushing out existing competition.” (11:52, Gavin Bade)

6. The “Be Careful What You Wish For” Lesson

• Structural Clash: Fuyao’s high-efficiency, low-cost, state-subsidized model is fundamentally at odds with Vitro’s unionized, higher-wage American model (15:24, Gavin Bade).
• Quotable Summary: “These Chinese companies...are just really, really good at manufacturing. They are very efficient, they work their people really hard...operating under a different economic model...it’s not as important for them to show profitability as quickly.” (15:24, Gavin Bade)

7. Future Outlook

• Vitro’s Uncertainty: Vitro’s Ohio plant will stay open for now, but its future is precarious (14:47).
• Policy Open Questions: U.S. policymakers face the challenge of encouraging manufacturing jobs while guarding against unfair competition and strategic vulnerabilities (13:41–14:47).

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On Vitro’s cultural pride:
  “They've got good pay, they've got good benefits, they've got good time off and they're proud of their work.”
  — Gavin Bade [04:10]

• Community reaction to Fuyao:
  “Everyone was all in on this and...it looked like a great idea.”
  — Gavin Bade [05:35]

• On federal investigation into Fuyao:
  “According to the federal complaint, what the Fuyao business owners did was create this pipeline to import house and employ undocumented labor...”
  — Gavin Bade [07:52]

• Trump’s dual stance on foreign investment:
  “Let China come in. Let Japan come in. They are, and they'll be building plants, but they're using our labor.”
  — Donald Trump [10:35]

• The dilemma for U.S. policy:
  “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.”
  — Gavin Bade [13:52]

• Episode takeaway:
  “Be careful what you wish for...the Chinese companies are operating under a different economic model...that’s how the argument from the China hawks goes.”
  — Gavin Bade [15:24]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Vitro’s background & local importance: 03:34–04:54
• Fuyao arrives in Ohio: 04:54–06:12
• Market competition and Vitro struggles: 06:12–09:07
• Federal investigation into Fuyao: 06:38–09:07
• Vitro’s lobbying and national policy debate: 09:42–13:41
• Internal dumping & national security concerns: 11:52–13:10
• Policy tension and sector expansion: 13:41–14:47
• Cultural/economic model clash: 15:24–16:22

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Conclusion

This episode examines the tension between America’s desire to revive domestic manufacturing and the risks posed by powerful foreign players enabled by fundamentally different economic systems. Fuyao’s success in Ohio exemplifies how global competition, especially under varying labor and subsidy regimes, can undercut traditional American industry models and force a reckoning in policy and practice.

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Transcript

[Jessica 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?

[Gavin 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.

[Jessica Mendoza]

The company Gavin talked to is called Vitro. Vitro is a multinational glass company with plants all over the US Including a crucial auto glass factory outside Columbus, Ohio. And Gavin says that recently that factory has been facing a crisis.

[Gavin Bade]

They were really concerned about Chinese competition not coming from overseas, but actually one that had set up here in the

[Jessica Mendoza]

US 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

[Gavin Bade]

in a big way? That is part of this story, right? And that's certainly what the Fu Yao people would say and also kind of some of their allies. But this story is about the risks to US 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 US and what happens when they are more efficient and allegedly not playing by the same rules?

[Jessica Mendoza]

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.

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[Jessica 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.

[Gavin Bade]

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

[Jessica Mendoza]

Gavin says walking into Vitro's plant is like going back in time.

[Gavin Bade]

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 that when you go to grind it, it's a smooth surface and you just hear the, you know, the clank 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, they've got good time off and they're proud of their work. You know, they're really, really proud of what they do.

[Jessica Mendoza]

For years, Vitro was the main glass making 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.

[Gavin Bade]

So you've got a ready made industrial site, you have a state that really wants the investment, that's gonna 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.

[Jessica Mendoza]

And how did the community react to Fuyao coming to town?

[Gavin Bade]

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 obviously they getting paid. They like having a job. And so there was a lot to be gained by Fu Yao coming to this area for sure.

[Jessica 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,

[Gavin 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.

[Jessica 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.

[Gavin 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 and there are concerns about just how many people are crammed into these places.

[Jessica Mendoza]

After five years of investigating, DHS eventually raided the Fuyao plant in 2024.

[Gavin 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 27.

[Jessica 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.

[Gavin 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.

[Jessica Mendoza]

A Fuyao spokeswoman said all employees at Fuyao were authorized to work in the US 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?

[Gavin 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?

[Jessica 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.

[Gavin 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.

[Jessica Mendoza]

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 US

[Donald Trump]

Let China come in. Let Japan come in. They are, and they'll be building plants, but they're using our labor.

[Jessica Mendoza]

The idea is that these foreign companies could add jobs back into stagnant local economies.

[Donald Trump]

If 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.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Let's. From Fuyao'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 Vitro says Fuyao's presence in the region has undercut Vitro's ability to keep stable union jobs. In addition to the allegations that Fuyao employs undocumented workers, there are also concerns about Beijing subsidizing Fuyao's operations to give them the upper hand in pricing.

[Gavin Bade]

The Vitro 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 Fuyao's not playing the same game that they are.

[Jessica Mendoza]

The Fuyao 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.

[Gavin Bade]

What's happening with Fuyao, 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 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.

[Jessica Mendoza]

There's a related national security concern as well, especially as tensions between the US And China ratchet up.

[Gavin Bade]

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 US And China, Beijing can just tell Fuyao stop supplying these American companies and really can mess up the automotive supply chain.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Are we seeing this in other industries currently or beyond just sort of Fu, Yao and Vitro?

[Gavin Bade]

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.

[Jessica Mendoza]

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.

[Gavin Bade]

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. You know, 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.

[Jessica Mendoza]

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 Crestline, 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, Fuyao 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

[Gavin Bade]

be careful what you wish for thing. You know, 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 US does in many cases. And if you let that economic model in, model is going to clash with the 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.

[Jessica Mendoza]

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.

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