Trump’s Tariffs Make Boeing a Potential Target in a Trade War<br />And he’s doing the right thing.”<br />Two months later, the president visited Boeing’s South Carolina plant and, standing before a 787 Dreamliner, proclaimed, “God bless Boeing.”<br />While campaigning, Mr. Trump had repeatedly criticized the Export-Import Bank, which lends so much money to Mr. Muilenburg’s company<br />that it has been referred to as “Boeing’s Bank.” But in his first year as president, Mr. Trump decided to keep the bank alive.<br />He later told reporters that Boeing was “doing a little bit of a number,” and said, “We want Boeing to make a lot of money, but not that much money.”<br />Two weeks later, Dennis A. Muilenburg, Boeing’s chief executive, visited Mr. Trump in Florida and promised to keep the plane’s cost down.<br />“If China decides to retaliate, it hurts their airlines<br />and their burgeoning aerospace industry,” said Scott Hamilton, the managing director at the Leeham Company, an aviation consulting firm in Bainbridge Island, Wash. “Why would you do that?”<br />But if China wanted to exact revenge on the United States through Boeing, it would be uniquely positioned to do so.<br />“The likelihood of retaliation by their biggest single market, China, elevates this from an irritant to potentially disastrous, if not catastrophic,” said Richard Aboulafia,<br />vice president of analysis at Teal Group Corporation, a consulting firm in Fairfax, Va. “A trade war is the simplest way to cut off this fantastic growth they have enjoyed.”<br />Boeing has prospered since Mr. Trump’s election.
