MORAINE, Ohio—President Trump spent much of last year courting foreign investment in U.S. factories, promising to replace jobs lost to the global economy. The rise of a Chinese automotive glass plant in the Ohio heartland shows the risks when America’s biggest rival sets up shop.
Ohio’s governor, along with state and federal lawmakers, welcomed Fuyao when the Chinese glassmaking giant took over a closed General Motors factory a decade ago. The project, supported by Ohio taxpayers, was hailed as a step to reviving a battered Rust Belt region. Now, many feel duped.
Competition from the Fuyao Glass America plant is threatening about 250 jobs at a rival glass factory operating since the 1950s. Vitro, the company that owns the longtime plant in Crestline, Ohio, has spent the past year considering whether to shut down, said Carlos Bernal, Vitro’s head of automotive glass.
After announcing plans to close the Vitro plant at the end of 2026, the company told employees last month it would continue operating. Yet the plant’s long-term future is uncertain. Since 2019, Vitro has shut three auto-glass plants in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Indiana—decisions the company attributes in large part to Chinese competition.
The entry of Chinese firms into the U.S. auto industry “not only threatens the safety and security of domestic supply chains,” Bernal said, the companies “jeopardize entire communities that rely on American manufacturing jobs.”
Rivals say they can’t match Fuyao’s lower prices and allege the company employs unfair business and labor practices. The Chinese company supplies GM, Ford, Stellantis and other automakers in the U.S.
Vitro’s concerns reached Washington after federal authorities conducted a raid on the Fuyao plant in 2024. The U.S. alleges that Chinese business owners formed a web of dozens of commercial enterprises in Ohio to “facilitate the harboring, transportation, and employment of illegal aliens at various factories,” including Fuyao, which allegedly funneled $126 million to companies in the scheme, according to a civil forfeiture complaint filed by federal authorities last year in U.S. District Court. No one has been criminally charged in the case.
Fuyao denies any wrongdoing and attributes its success to the same production prowess and economies of scale that have made China the world’s leading manufacturer. The company said its Moraine plant employs more than 3,000 workers—most of them from the area—and is expanding.
“In any industry, long-term success cannot be achieved by price alone,” said Fuyao spokeswoman Stella Zhang. “Our prices are reasonable, and customers choose Fuyao based on a comprehensive evaluation of technological expertise, product quality, delivery reliability, and service excellence.”
Zhang said all employees at Fuyao were authorized to work in the U.S. and that the investigation targeted its suppliers, not Fuyao.
Vitro and its Washington allies say Fuyao’s success reflects a way Beijing might try to hollow out American manufacturing capacity and undermine critical industries.
They argue that Chinese companies can evade tariffs by moving production to the U.S., using low prices to undercut manufacturers in America, a practice known as internal dumping. These companies trounce competitors with a combination of production efficiencies and, allegedly, illegal labor practices as well as subsidies from Beijing, according to China hawks in Washington.
“It’s a really dirty game,” said Elaine Dezenski, head of the Center on Economic and Financial Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a think tank critical of China.
Fuyao’s success has set off national-security concerns in Congress and some federal agencies—mainly that China could disrupt the American automotive sector and other crucial industries if it gained significant market share at the expense of factories now operating in the U.S.
“The Chinese government is systematically weakening our economy from within our own borders,” said Nazak Nikaktar, a former Commerce Department official in Trump’s first term who oversaw efforts to confront China.
The Chinese embassy in Washington rejected the claim.
While Chinese investment in the U.S. has fallen in recent years, similar complaints are erupting in other industries. U.S.-based copper companies have told the White House and Commerce Department they fear being undercut by Chinese firms building and operating new processing facilities stateside, said people familiar with the matter. The concerns sparked discussion in the Trump administration about how to regulate Chinese firms located in the U.S.
“The Trump administration is committed to securing more investment into American manufacturing, without compromising on our national and economic security or our immigration and antitrust laws,” White House spokesman Kush Desai said.
Leaders at the Vitro factory say they have done everything possible to wring efficiencies out of their decades-old plant, such as installing new equipment and reducing the number of employees. But they still can’t match Fuyao’s prices.
“We’ve seen our volume drop by 50% in the last seven years,” said Rich Parron, plant manager at the Vitro factory in Crestline.
Fuyao declined to provide pricing for its products. A person familiar with recent deals with automakers said Fuyao prices generally run about 10% less than what competitors charge.
Paychecks in peril
Chandra Jarvis has worked 13 years at the Vitro plant in Crestline, a distressed rural town of some 4,500 residents, about a two-and-a-half-hour drive from the Fuyao factory. Union wages helped the 48-year-old single mother support her daughter through nursing school and her son through high school. She said working at the plant, where she is known as “Momma,” provides her and co-workers both financial security and a sense of community. Many now are afraid.
“There are families with young kids that they need to provide for,” Jarvis said—workers who depend on jobs that would be “ripped away” should the plant close.
Roy Dent, a glass-furnace operator, still remembers the plant’s heyday in the 1970s. Then-owner Pittsburgh Plate Glass had around 1,000 employees who worked around the clock to supply auto plants in Detroit and beyond.
“There were times since I’ve been here that I’ve seen helicopters land in a parking lot just to take product out,” Dent said.
Trump’s tariff agenda is meant to restore those glory days, and many Vitro workers say they support the president’s focus on rebuilding U.S. manufacturing. They also are indignant about the government unfurling a welcome mat for Fuyao.
“Wouldn’t you have a little bit of resentment if your job is being threatened?” said Kim Sumner, a 25-year employee at the Crestline plant.
Even supporters of Trump and Vice President JD Vance, who grew up in Ohio, expressed frustration and confusion about why they haven’t been pitched a lifeline. “They say they want to make America great again—where’s our help?” Jarvis asked at a roundtable with a dozen Crestline employees, prompting nods of approval.
Some administration officials are, in fact, discussing ways to limit Chinese investment in the U.S. on national-security grounds, according to people familiar with the matter.
Among the strategies under discussion is closer evaluation of foreign investments in such protected industries as automotive, copper, steel, aluminum and critical minerals, the people said. Yet the president could derail any new restrictions should the U.S. strike an investment deal with Beijing, they said. Trump is expected to meet with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in April.
Trump has said that despite trade tensions with Beijing, he welcomes new investment in the U.S. by Chinese companies, even in the automotive sector which he has used tariffs to protect.
“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,” Trump said during remarks at a Jan. 13 meeting of the Detroit Economic Club. “Let China come in.”
Days later, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney struck a deal with Beijing to slash a 100% tariff to 6.1% on as many as 49,000 Chinese electric vehicles. Trump responded to the announcement saying, “If you can get a deal with China, you should do that,” before pivoting days later to threaten Ottawa with 100% tariffs if it came to a larger agreement with Beijing.
Chris Kershner, president and CEO of the Dayton Area Chamber of Commerce, is among those who support more foreign investment from qualified nations. He is dismissive of Vitro’s complaints about Fuyao.
“It sounds like a competitor’s just peeved that they’re losing market share,” Kershner said, “and maybe they’re grasping at straws.”
Foreign hands
In July 2024, agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Internal Revenue Service and Border Patrol, as well as state and local police, entered the Fuyao plant and more than a dozen affiliated businesses.
The U.S. alleges that Fuyao and its affiliate companies created a pipeline to import workers for the auto-glass industry and provided them housing in family-style hotels and transportation to and from the Fuyao facility and other factories.
The affiliates were formed, according to the complaint, to “conceal the multi-million-dollar income generated as a result of the business owners conspiring to harbor, transport, and employ a workforce made in part of illegal aliens.” Some of the employees told law-enforcement agents they were trafficked across the U.S.-Mexico border, the complaint said.
Nearly all of Fuyao’s employees had documentation showing they were legally permitted to work in the U.S., according to the complaint. The company received 33 H-1B visas in the federal fiscal year 2025 for its Ohio facilities, government records show, about 1% of its local workforce. Many employees from Fuyao suppliers named in the investigation didn’t show up for work on the day of the raid, the federal complaint alleged, and none of the absentees had legal permission to work in the U.S.
Zhang, the Fuyao spokeswoman, said all employees at Fuyao were authorized to work in the U.S., and the company has since beefed up the vetting process for new hires among its suppliers. Fuyao declined requests for a tour of its Ohio factory or employee interviews.
A spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington said he wasn’t familiar with the Fuyao case but that Chinese companies “have made significant contributions to promoting domestic employment and economic development in the U.S.”
Vitro—which is based in Monterrey, Mexico—employs 13 Mexican nationals as engineers at its Crestline plant. The company said all of them have legal permission to work in the U.S.
Sen. Bernie Moreno (R., Ohio) wants to see the Fuyao plant under new ownership. Sen. John Husted (R., Ohio), who attended a 2020 celebration marking an expansion of the Fuyao factory while he was state lieutenant governor, said he was concerned about the trafficking allegations.
Rep. Hal Rogers (R., Ky.), chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice and Science, inserted language in a government funding bill—which Trump signed in January—directing the Justice Department to detail its efforts to combat alleged human trafficking in the auto-glass industry involving any company with ties to the Chinese Communist Party. Rogers’s district in Kentucky is home to another Vitro plant.
Bryce Burchett, the UAW union chair at the Vitro factory in Crestline, echoed complaints from co-workers about Fuyao’s alleged subsidies and illegal workers. “If we had everything they had, then we would be able to match them on price,” said the 31-year-old father of three. “But right now, we can’t.”
Write to Gavin Bade at gavin.bade@wsj.com