Shortly after his private plane landed in Ohio on a recent morning, the Chinese billionaire set off down Interstate 75 to inspect the factory on which he has staked his legacy and the future of this gritty patch of the American Rust Belt. The sprawling plant is a local landmark, just off the highway unofficially known as Auto Alley. General Motors built it in the 1920s, and for generations it created the kind of blue-collar jobs that defined America’s middle class. But by the time the last SUV rolled off the assembly line here, the city of Moraine had succumbed to the flood of inexpensive imports and cheap foreign labor that battered industrial towns in Ohio and across the country.
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