Britain’s May fires warning to Boeing over Bombardier ‘row’

LONDON, Sept 28, (RTRS): Prime Minister Theresa May told US planemaker Boeing on Thursday that its behaviour in a trade dispute with Canada’s Bombardier was undermining its commercial relationship with Britain.

May intervened in the trade row between Canada and the United States after a complaint by Boeing led to the US Department of Commerce imposing a preliminary 220-percent duty on Bombardier’s CSeries jets.

The US ruling puts as many as 4,200 jobs at risk at a plant in the British province of Northern Ireland, where the carbon wings for the jets are made.

“We have a long-term partnership with Boeing in various aspects of government and this is not the sort of behaviour we expect from a long-term partner and it undermines that partnership,” May said in response to a question at a Bank of England event.

Boeing, the world’s biggest plane maker, has said it is committed to the United Kingdom and values its partnership.

May’s criticism of Boeing indicates the importance of the plant to the small Northern Irish political party on which her government has relied since she lost her parliamentary majority in June following a botched election campaign.

Britain would nevertheless find it difficult to unpick its relationship with one of its most important defence equipment suppliers.

May also needs US President Donald Trump’s support as Britain prepares to sever ties with the European Union. She has pitched a new trade deal with the United States to cushion the impact of leaving the EU’s tariff-free single market.

But May could find it difficult to convince Trump, who has made ‘America First’ a theme of his administration, to get one of the titans of US industry to back off from defending what it views as its trade rights.

May, who had raised the issue with Trump, said she would try to work with Canada’s government to stress the importance of Bombardier to Northern Ireland.

On Wednesday, Boeing said it had listened to Britain’s concerns but gave no indication that it might change tack in the dispute.

Boeing said that since 2011 it had tripled its spending in the United Kingdom to 2.1 billion pounds ($2.8 billion) in 2016, while the firm and its suppliers accounted for more than 18,700 UK jobs.