The Conn-Selmer plant in Eastlake, Ohio, has been proudly producing brass musical instruments for over 60 years. Their employees have a dazzling array of knowledge around instrument production, using and refining techniques that have been used by Conn-Selmer for around 150 years.
Now all that’s coming to an abrupt end. On June 30, 2026 Conn-Selmer will close the doors for the last time, with instrument manufacture moving to China. As you might imagine, the reaction has been a combination of fury and sadness, particularly as many of them voted for Donald Trump to return to the presidency to stop this exact situation from happening.
Rubbing salt into the wound is that the company’s owner, billionaire hedge fund manager John Paulson, is a prominent financial backer of Trump himself, and was even considered for the role of Secretary of the Treasury! Paulson was also adamantly opposed to offshoring, saying:
“We can’t have American producers closing American factories and offshoring. We need to protect American jobs and protect American manufacturing.”
Reuters spoke to three-time Trump voter and 18-year veteran of the factory, Keith Czirka, who had assumed that they could pressure both Paulson and Trump to save their jobs. After all, allowing production to move to China would make Paulson look like a hypocrite and Trump like a failure, so surely they’d both leap to assist the workers.
Well, no. Despite a rally in which local officials pleaded with Paulson for action, a social media campaign trying to grab his attention, and an online petition to the White House to try and get Trump himself to intervene, those 150 American jobs will now be Chinese jobs.
Trump doesn’t care
Czirka seems baffled that the billionaire hedge fund manager would prioritize money over his politics: “Why Paulson would make the decision to go to China is beyond me at this point. China, for one, is an economic enemy of the United States.” Why indeed? Maybe he really wanted that third ivory backscratcher…
Reuters reported that the majority of the plant workers they spoke to had voted Trump, presuming that he’d step in to stop exactly this from happening. Indeed, Eastlake as a whole went firmly for Trump, with a solid majority concluding that Trump would improve their lives and save their jobs.
The very gullible can be forgiven for falling for this. After all, Trump was indeed very loudly insisting that his priority was to boost American manufacturing and specifically oppose jobs being moved to China. Given that Trump is also arguably the most notorious liar on the face of the planet, they might have been a little skeptical, but then what was Kamala Harris offering them that was better?
Now these unfortunate workers are realizing what so many have realized before them. Trump simply does not care in the slightest about regular people and has absolutely no frame of reference for what shutting down a factory will do to its workers or the future of a town. We doubt he’s ever even wasted a single second thinking about these people. Even if he was told about it, he’d forget a few moments later.
And as for hoping to rely on the kindness of a billionaire hedge fund manager who’s a rabid supporter of Donald Trump? You may as well be chickens hoping that the fox that’s staring at you while licking his lips is going to have a sudden change of heart.
