Hiltzik: Trump fired a tariff torpedo at China — and hit Boeing right between the eyes

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FILE - This image taken Sunday, Jan. 7, 2024, and released by the National Transportation Safety Board, shows a section of Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 that is missing panel on a Boeing 737-9 MAX in Portland, Ore. Federal officials are recommending that airlines inspect the door plugs on more Boeing 737s after one of the panel blew off a Boeing jet in midflight. The Federal Aviation Administration says airlines should also inspect the panels on an older model, the 737-900ER. Those planes have door plugs that are identical in design to the one that flew off the Alaska Airlines jetliner. Boeing said Monday, Jan. 22, 2024that it supports the FAA action. (NTSB via AP, file)
A section of Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 that lost a fuselage panel on a Boeing 737-9 Max, one in a string of mishaps that shattered Boeing's reputation for quality. (Associated Press)

We keep hearing about all the goods that will become more expensive for Americans thanks to Donald Trump's tariff policy, such as it is: clothing, shoes, cars, food, especially anything imported from China.

But the latest skirmish between Trump and China has painted a target on this nation's most important manufacturing exporter: Boeing Co.

On Tuesday, news emerged that Chinese authorities have ordered the country's airlines not to place new orders for Boeing aircraft and to get approval from the government before taking delivery of planes already ordered.

This is a tariff policy we've been told will solve the fentanyl crisis, get rid of illegal immigration, rescue the budget deficit, solve bilateral trade deficits and cure toe fungus....Actually we're serving none of those goals.

Economist Justin Wolfers

The size of the blow China struck against Boeing is hard to measure, especially in the short term. Industry analysts calculate China's orders to amount to 5% to 6% of the company's overall international order book. But Boeing is the biggest exporter in the U.S., and about 80% of its production goes overseas.

That makes Boeing especially vulnerable to all the chaos created by Trump's tariff war. Earlier this week, Michael O'Leary, the chief executive of the Ireland-based low-cost airline Ryanair, said the tariffs might prompt his company to defer taking delivery of 25 Boeing airliners until sometime next year, instead of in August.

The Chinese ban plainly hit Trump in the solar plexus. After the ban was reported Tuesday, Trump took to his social media platform, Truth Social, to grouse that China "just reneged on the big Boeing deal, saying that they will 'not take possession' of fully committed to aircraft."

If that's so, Trump has no one to blame but himself. Boeing's plight is just one aspect of a White House tariff policy that increasingly resembles, as Shakespeare might have put it, "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

A more contemporary judgment is that of economist Justin Wolfers of the University of Michigan, who on Tuesday put his finger on the fundamental incoherence of Trump's policy:

"This is a tariff policy we've been told will solve the fentanyl crisis, get rid of illegal immigration, rescue the budget deficit, solve bilateral trade deficits and cure toe fungus," Wolfers said on MSNBC. "All of these things can't happen at once and in the way they're pursuing them, actually we're serving none of those goals."


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