A step toward trade war:
Trump’s Commerce Department imposes huge tariff on Canada’s Bombardier
By
Roger Jordan
28 September 2017
The Trump administration has imposed a massive 219 percent interim tariff on imports of Bombardier’s new C Series of mid-size passenger jets, effectively shutting the financially-troubled Canadian-based aerospace manufacturer out of its largest potential market.
The decision, announced by US Commerce Secretary and Trump billionaire crony Wilbur Ross late Tuesday, has been met with anger and threats of retaliation from Canada and Britain.
Both Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and British Prime Minister Theresa May had personally lobbied Trump not to act on a complaint from the US-based aerospace giant Boeing that Bombardier has unfairly benefited from state subsidies.
But rather than heeding their pleas, the Trump administration imposed a penalty almost three times more the 79 percent duty Boeing had sought.
“The U.S. values its relationships with Canada,” said Ross, “but even our closest allies must play by the rules.”
Bombardier is scheduled to deliver the first in a possible sale of up to 125 of its “100 C-Series” aircraft to Delta Airlines next spring. However that deal, which has been viewed as pivotal to Bombardier’s plans to market the C Series globally, is now very much in doubt.
The size of the Commerce Department penalty has shocked international observers.
Boeing is undoubtedly a powerful US transnational. One moreover that is a charter member of the US military-industrial complex. But clearly, the Trump administration is also using the Bombardier-Boeing dispute to send a message to the world that it intends to press forward with its “America First” program, which seeks to halt the accelerating decline of…