Gavin Bade

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.

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

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, right?

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.

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 a

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.

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.

Fuyao says that, you know, none of these allegations of unfair labor practices or trade practices are legitimate.