Wall Street Comes to Fayette: Update 2

Several weeks ago, I wrote about the shutdown of Eagle Machining in the village of Fayette, Ohio. In the first update to that post, I discussed the legal case against the owners.

This update is a little broader, and linked to the news that the U.S. trade deficit increased sharply, and that U.S. manufacturing employment has declined. By a lot.

Again, I'll focus on a narrow bit of Ohio, in the region where Eagle Machining sits. Earlier this month, Goodyear announced that its Tall Timbers mold facility in Findlay, Ohio was shutting down. On March 31, 85 people will lose their jobs.

They used to work for Cooper Tire, but Goodyear bought Cooper several years ago, using that old standby business lingo favorite "synergy" to justify the purchase. Well, now they're synergizing by consolidating the Findlay facility into a plant in North Carolina, and synergizing people out of their jobs.

Meanwhile, in late January, Fresenius Medical Care, the dialysis people (now there's an industry that deserves a hard look), announced that it was closing a distribution facility in Oregon, Ohio, near Toledo. Fifty-four people will lose their jobs.

Also in January, Conn Selmar announced that it wanted to shut down its manufacturing center in Eastlake, Ohio, near Cleveland. About 150 people would be thrown out of work. Most are represented by the United Auto Workers, which promised to fight the closure. The union faces long odds in trying to prevent it.

Conn Selmar is America's largest maker of brass musical instruments, and it owns the Ludwig drum brand, among others. The company said the manufacturing of some French horns would move to Indiana, but the rest of the line would be sent off shore, to China, according to some reports.

Conn Selmar is owned by John Paulson's hedge fund. You may know Paulson as a big supporter and funder of Donald Trump, the man who said he would personally stop offshoring, rejuvenate American manufacturing, and eliminate the trade deficit.

(Tomorrow: Back to regular programming with a subscriber-only post about the current right-wing craze for "Western Civilization" and its dark history.)