Prime Minister joins British PM Theresa May to support Bombardier. During meeting in Ottawa, both say CETA a ‘basis’ for post-Brexit Canada-U.K. trade deal.
OTTAWA—Prime Minister Justin Trudeau threatened Monday to scrap his government’s planned purchase of Boeing Super Hornet fighter jets in direct retaliation for the U.S. company’s trade complaint against Bombardier.
Flanked by British Prime Minister Theresa May who’d expressed fears that Bombardier jobs at a Northern Ireland plant could be hit by Boeing’s trade actions against the Canadian company, Trudeau upped the ante in the increasingly bitter trade dispute with the United States.
“We have obviously been looking at the Super Hornet aircraft from Boeing as a potential significant procurement of our new fighter jets,” said Trudeau.
“But we won’t do business with a company that’s busy trying to sue us and put our aerospace workers out of business.”
The ultimatum to Boeing comes as the U.S. department of commerce is expected to rule next week on the Boeing complaint. The Liberal government last week said Boeing walked out of talks to resolve the commercial dispute.
Trudeau’s threat came moments after U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May lent her support to Canada, saying she’d raised concerns about what Trudeau and she believe is an unfair trade move against Bombardier in a call last week with U.S. President Donald Trump. May said she intends to raise it again with him when she meets Trump at the United Nations in New York this week.
British Prime Minister Theresa May meets with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in his office on Parliament Hill on Monday. May says she is pleased to be in Canada and has a lot of topics to discuss. (Sean Kilpatrick / THE CANADIAN PRESS)
“I will be impressing upon him the significance of Bombardier to the United Kingdom and particularly obviously to Northern Ireland and we have discussed today how we can work together to see a resolution of this issue which from my point of view I want to see a resolution that protects those jobs in northern Ireland,” May told reporters.
Trudeau said defending Bombardier’s “excellent” C-Series aircraft “is a priority for us” and he condemned Boeing, saying its motivation for launching the complaint is “extremely narrow” and “for trade-related reasons linked to their own profits.”