In Eastlake, Ohio, a stark lesson in capitalist hypocrisy is unfolding. Hedge fund billionaire John Paulson, a longtime donor and ally of Donald Trump, helped raise about $50.5 million for Trump at a major 2024 fundraiser. Now, Conn Selmer, the largest U.S. manufacturer of band and orchestral instruments, says it is making a tentative decision to close its Eastlake plant on or about June 30, 2026, with the union warning that core work is being shifted overseas to China.
That move collides with Paulson’s own public rhetoric. Just last year, he argued that American producers should not close American factories and offshore jobs, and he praised Trump’s tariff politics as protection for U.S. workers. The union response is blunt. UAW Local 2359 president Robert Hines, who works at the plant, calls it a “slap in the face,” saying the union came prepared to bargain while the company presented the closure as a done deal and the community’s efforts to keep the facility open were met with silence.
Relocating production to China is not the moral scandal by itself. Chinese workers benefit from jobs, and that is not the target. The scandal is the lie built into pro-worker branding under capitalism. When costs rise or profits dip, capital moves. When policy threatens margins, capital buys influence. Conn Selmer’s own announcement frames the closure as a competitiveness move, while labor argues the real result is predictable, local jobs sacrificed for higher returns.
If profit conditions shift again, capital will do the same thing somewhere else. Ohio is the lesson today. It will not be the last place tomorrow. For working people, the takeaway is simple. Stop trusting donor class rhetoric. Judge leaders by enforceable commitments to workers, bargaining power, and community stability, not by slogans on television.
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