[Music] stoen trailers has been around since 1961 uh we've always been a familyowned company uh predominantly with Manufacturing in southern Wisconsin and our primary products are support the transportation industry including semi-trailers container chassis and grain [Music] trailers in the early late '90s early 2000s we were one of the largest manufacturers in North America of in modal containers and [Music] Chassis and in about uh the the early 2000s China came in very aggressively and they had a goal of not only dominating that market but wiping everybody else out and they did ston trailer CEO Bob Welling clearly remembers what it was like back in 2007 to lay off hundreds of workers and shut down their plant in Evansville Wisconsin we couldn't get raw material to our plants uh for for a cost equivalent to what they were bringing finished product into the ports of China and delivering into the us at so uh there there was just no way to compete and in a few short years they not only wiped out our participation in those products they wiped out everybody else's of any significance in North America it's frustrating it's this strong superpower on the other side of the world that isn't playing by the international trade rules and regulations we live right in the communities and when you have those layoffs just seeing how it significantly impacted them and it's your friends it's your neighbors uh it's the people you've worked with for a number of decades and uh you know being in a spot where you have to let them go uh it's it's disappointing and it it makes you want to fight back and fight back they did a coalition of us companies including stoen trailer filed a complaint with the US International Trade Commission that Chinese competitors were selling trailer chassis in the United States for below the actual cost a trade violation known as dumping it was April 11th 2021 when Wen stood alone inside that Idol Evansville plant and got some important news my phone started to vibrate and I at that time I was waiting for an update from our team in Washington DC our legal team that was waiting for the vote from the International Trade Commission on our anti-dumping counterveiling duty case and uh it was just a real quick short sentence that we were successful on a unanimous vote with the ITC and it was just such a um overwhelming feeling of various emotions uh excitement a little bit of disbelief uh but also motivation and start really planning and making um making changes to get that plant back up and going again the April ruling from the US International Trade Commission became a seminal moment in an industry Trend called reshoring which is the return of work from overseas for reasons that can include trade Wars and tariffs in some cases come companies have moved work back after taking it overseas in other cases like stoen trailers they have restored production that had been lost to foreign competitors how are thanks for us former US Congressman Mike Gallagher a republican from La in Northeast Wisconsin served as chair of the house select committee on competition with China during a visit to the company back in August 2023 Gallagher praise stoen trailers for standing up to Chinese competitors I think sten's uh story is a great example of American grit and determination in the face of China's economic Warfare I I i' like to think that and I and I take a lot of pride in that and um look a small family run business in South Central Wisconsin is able to go and take on a company dominated by the government of China that has the full force of the Chinese government that we can take them on and win uh I I I I I'm proud if people look at that as an example of uh what American an American company can do they won uh the case uh tariffs were uh put in place as a result and that helped them now add a new production line here open up new facilities in other places like Waco so it's an inspiring story but they shouldn't be left on their own left to file legal defenses there should be a coherent government strategy so we have their back are tariffs on Chinese Goods a lasting solution or more of a short-term fix to address dumping specifically yeah I think uh I think there're a shortterm solution designed a buy time where we can restructure our economic relationship with China tariffs can increase the cost of goods but you got to weigh that against the cost of having an entire American company or an entire American industry disappear Because by the time Chinese Goods arrive on American soil they've been so heavily subsidized by the Chinese government that no American company can compete fairly with them so that's always the risk reward but they can be used when applied strategically and effectively they can be useful reshoring has been accompanied by other Trends such as Factory Automation and hiring people from other places due to local worker shortages the biggest shift is it's gone from from uh really physical labor to much more automation right that physical labor has been replaced with uh a more mental labor on programming on uh running robots on uh uh setting up material control systems and Automation and a drive to do things easier but also raise that quality level we've had such fast growth we've had to kind of go outside of the current market to keep up with that growth uh that doesn't mean we're not hiring local workers it's it's a mix of both uh we've had up to 250 employees that we've transferred from Puerto Rico so there was a lot of people from Puerto Rico with the hurricanes and uh some of the development in that country that were looking to come to the to the mainland and uh work 25-year-old Alfredo oringo is one of those workers when the hurricane came our house house the roof came up and it damaged everything on the inside the living room um the bedroom and everything um when I got here I didn't know anything about trailers I'm a production um supervisor I'm in charge of the front line so you're going to see how we build the entire wall with this job I bought my dad two brand new cars improving their house and everything I put a new roof on it oh yeah it's it's been nice hi guys how you doing well says he can repeat Alfredo oro's success story for the next generation of workers coming from Wisconsin's technical college system we have uh a a strong investment in our people and it's not just training them on how to weld but it's training them on lean manufacturing uh Six Sigma Black Belt Green Belt certifications and uh other other areas and the technical colleges have been have been very key in that while Lane agrees that China is still still considered the factory of the world but knows that his company's strong sense of American Pride will keep manufacturing thriving in Wisconsin and elsewhere in the United States they are out to dominate they are out to not not just beat but crush and eliminate the competition if we can't build it ourselves and something escalates whether it's another covid or something worse globally where are we going to get everything right uh we don't have to be 100% self-sufficient as a country but we need to be self-sufficient at a core level on many critical items CU if we don't have that that's that's a security threat uh to everybody that lives in the United States so you see some of the uh American flages around the plant um you get you get a pride in a sense of uh you know we we we can compete with them we we can fight back and we can build it better than they can and you get angry you get protective and you're ready for that fight