The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States has found no national security concerns related to Chinese investments made in Wilmington-based Vertex Railcar Corp., company officials announced Wednesday.

Vertex received notice from CFIUS that it has completed its review of Vertex Railcar's joint venture, according to a Vertex news release, "and there are no unresolved national security issues relating to the transaction. The result was as Vertex expected."

Vertex officials requested a review by CFIUS after nearly 100 members of Congress asked the panel and the U.S. Treasury Department to look into the matter, citing national security and economic concerns. 

“We know that Chinese corporations use their vast state-sponsored resources to force out homegrown competition and this buyout will mean that fewer American railcars will be built with made in America iron and steel and assembled by American workers who are paid [a] decent wage," said U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., in a news release in September. "As a matter of both national and economic security, we must ensure that our American manufacturers and workers have a level playing field on which they can fairly compete and succeed.”
 
Vertex General Counsel Foster Sayers had said previously that the Congressional calls on the U.S. Treasury and CFIUS to investigate the joint venture were very misguided, the Vertex news release said.

“There was never any cause for concern over this company, and that is why Vertex took the proactive step of making a voluntary filing with CFIUS and getting clearance,” Sayers said in the release Wednesday. “We are and always will be an American company, creating American jobs, and making products here in the United States.”
 
In an emailed statement Wednesday, one of the members of Congress that sought an investigation, Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Oregon, blasted CFIUS.

“This ill-considered decision flies in the face of our national security and only highlights how woefully out of date CFIUS’s guidelines are,” DeFazio said. “As US businesses face increasing encroachment from foreign state-owned entities, it’s evident that CFIUS needs broader authority to recognize security threats. In the next Congress, I will be introducing legislation that will expand CFIUS’s critical infrastructure guidelines to include rail infrastructure, so that we will not remain vulnerable to security threats such as the one posed by the Vertex deal.”

Vertex Railcar Corp. CEO Donald Croteau said in the release that Vertex "will continue to expand our presence in the North American rail industry. We are ramping up to a strong spring production schedule and look forward to a successful 2017.”

When asked for specifics on the ramp-up at the company's 202 Raleigh St. facility, Sayers said in an email, "We are currently planning production and operations and cannot yet say when and to what extent additional hiring will take place. For competitive reasons we are not going to specify car types but can confirm that we plan to build both tank and non tank cars in 2017."

Sayers also cited competitive reasons for not sharing the company's current number of employees Wednesday.