Jan. 31--THE STEEL beams of a soaring office tower beginning to rise from the ruins of the World Trade Center are a tribute to American resilience, but also a marker in the decline of yet another industry.

Not an inch of imported glass went into the two lost towers, built 40 years ago. The lower floors of the new one will soon be sheathed in Chinese glass.

The decline of glassmaking in America started gradually in the 1990s and accelerated during the Great Recession.

What's more, the big companies, like Corning Inc. and Guardian Industries, say that even as the economy improves, they are unlikely to bring domestic employment and production back to prerecession levels.

One reason is that imports inhibit sales.

Another is that bigger profits lie abroad, so they are channeling investment and expansion to their overseas factories.

"Those who are looking through the rearview mirror, waiting for the glass industry in this country to come back, should know it isn't going to come back, not the way it was," said Russell Ebeid, Guardian's chairman.

With the nationwide U.S. unemployment rate hovering at 10 percent, the possibility of stemming job losses holds considerable appeal. Some are pressing the Obama Administration to offer protection for the nation's glass workers by raising existing tariffs on imported glass, particularly from China, as is happening on steel and tires.

They say that Chinese glassmakers are competitive in the American marketplace only because they have received giant subsidies in recent years from the Chinese government. The subsidies offset, among other things, the high cost of shipping glass across the Pacific.

The United Steelworkers, which represents employees of some of the biggest glassmakers, endorses free trade but insists that in the cases of tires, steel pipe, and now glass, Chinese government subsidies have undercut the market forces on which free trade depends.

U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, a Democrat from Ohio, still a big glassmaking state, takes the argument a step further. Given the deep symbolism of the new World Trade Center tower, he considers awarding the glass contracts to the lowest bidders, as the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey did last year, a blow to national pride.

Beijing Glass won in the bidding to supply the opaque, blast-resistant glass for the first 20 floors of the new tower, which is still just seven stories of steel beams dwarfed by the huge cranes putting the framework in place.

In the Trade Center bidding, Guardian won as the supplier of the intricately layered glass for the upper 85 floors. It will soon make that glass at a factory in Carleton, Mich., about 25 miles northeast of Toledo.

But even as company executives described this victory in interviews this month, they sent out a news release noting a greater one.

Guardian manufactured all the glass -- more than 2 million square feet of it -- for the newly opened 160-story Burj Khalifa in Dubai, the world's tallest building. That glass came not from America, but from Guardian's factories in Germany and Luxembourg. The company has 36 plants abroad, with 9,000 employees, up from 6,500 in 2005 and, for the first time, surpassing the number of its employees in this country.

"Nearly three-quarters of our sales are outside the United States," Mr. Ebeid said. "That has been steadily increasing since 1981, when we were totally a domestic supplier."

Like many glass factories in the United States -- those that have survived the recession -- the Guardian plant in Carleton is operating at less than 85 percent of capacity, producing long strips of coated "float" glass from which windows, glassware, fiber optics, auto windshields, solar panels, and other glass products are fashioned.

Employment has fallen to 410 people, from 520 as the recession was getting under way in January, 2008.

The work force will not return to the old level, said Gerry Hool, the plant manager. That is partly because of new efficiencies, but also because imported glass now accounts for nearly 24 percent of domestic consumption, up from 21 percent just four years ago.

What's more, the industry's biggest customers -- automakers and home builders -- are not likely to raise production to the levels during the housing bubble and before the credit crisis.

"Maybe in better times we'll get back to 450 workers," Mr. Hool said.

Float glass continues to be made on Pilkington North America Inc.'s two production lines in Rossford, which makes glass for the automotive and agricultural implement industries, company spokesman Roberta Steedman said. The volumes at the company's Rossford plant "have been down over the last 12 to 18 months," she said.

"The U.S. glass industry is no doubt at a critical juncture," Ms. Steedman said, adding that portions of the federal stimulus package like the advanced energy manufacturing credit will help.

"The potential for energy savings through both existing and emerging glass technology is enormous in construction and automotive applications. However, given the current market pressures and economic conditions as well as competition from heavily subsidized foreign glass manufacturers, it is very difficult for domestic glass manufacturers to bear 100 percent of the investment cost of installing the equipment and technology necessary to bring these energy saving technologies to the marketplace," she said.

Some pockets of strength in the overall glass industry remain. Beer and wine bottles are made in America, at automated plants, some of which are owned by Perrysburg-based Owens-Illinois Inc. Toledo-based Libbey Inc. is the second largest producer of consumer tableware in the world and has about 1,400 employees in Toledo, about 1,000 of them in its plant in North Toledo.

And from two factories in the Ohio Valley, operating around the clock every day, Anchor Hocking Co. churns out glass baking dishes, drinking glasses, canisters, candleholders, and meter covers, counting on service such as just-in-time delivery to Wal-Mart Stores Inc. to stave off imports. Anchor Hocking has no factories abroad.

But elsewhere in the Ohio Valley, dozens of companies that once made glass for the furniture industry, concentrated just to the south in the Carolinas, are gone.

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