One of Donald Trump’s earliest Wall Street backers is planning to move his Ohio manufacturing operation to China — and workers are calling on the president to save their jobs.
Workers are furious at hedge fund billionaire John Paulson — who has publicly praised Trump’s tariffs as necessary to protect domestic manufacturing jobs — after he told union officials he intended to offshore most of the work at Conn Selmer by June, reported The Guardian.
“To go publicly on CNBC to support the Trump administration’s positive views on tariffs and all that stuff, and then you turn around and [say you] want to go send the work right over to China,” said Robert Hines, president of UAW Local 2359 and a worker at the plant. “It’s a slap in our face.”
Workers were informed the East Lake plant, which is the largest U.S. manufacturer of brass and orchestra instruments, last month at the start of negotiations for a new union contract.
“We came in with a full proposal, fully prepared to bargain, and they started off with a presentation of telling us how bad we were doing,” Hines said.
Conn Selmer opened a facility last year in China and gradually shifted its workload there, although workers said they were told that would not affect their jobs in Ohio, and a spokesperson for the company confirmed that some instrument production will be transferred overseas if “the “tentative decision is finalized.”
“[The closure] will improve our competitiveness and better meet today’s market demands”, the company said. “We remain deeply committed to US manufacturing, as we have been for more than 150 years.”
Paulson made much of his fortune by betting against the housing market that crashed in 2008 and served on Trump’s economic policy team during his first presidential campaign n 2016, and he was vying to become treasury secretary during his second presidency but withdrew due to “complex financial obligations.”
Hines, the union leader, said Paulson’s decision to offshore 150 jobs in Ohio is deeply offensive after Paulson has publicly declared his support for domestic manufacturing, and he’s hopeful Trump himself might persuade his ally to stop the move.
This decision can still be reversed,” Hines said.
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