Trump: Let’s scrap new Air Force One

President-elect claims Boeing’s budget is out of control for project.

WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald Trump took a shot on Tuesday at one of the nation’s largest manufacturers, Boeing, sharply criticizing a pending order for a new Air Force One and suggesting that the company was “doing a little bit of a number” with the cost of the next generation of presidential aircraft.

“Boeing is building a brand new 747 Air Force One for future presidents, but costs are out of control, more than $4 billion,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “Cancel order!”

Although his post attracted attention because it was about the most famous airplane in the world, the significance may be broader: For perhaps the first time since President John F. Kennedy took on the steel industry in the early 1960s, the heads of big American companies are being confronted by a leader willing to call them out directly and publicly for his policy and political aims.

Although President Barack Obama forcefully criticized Wall Street and the financial industry after Lehman Bros. collapsed in 2008, he tended not to single

out individual companies. But Trump is now targeting Boeing a week after he pushed Carrier and its parent company, United Technologies, to keep about 1,000 manufacturing jobs in Indiana, and three weeks after he singled out a Ford plant in Kentucky.

What is motivating Trump is not always clear. His transition team is receiving information about major federal programs, and Trump received a briefing Monday that included the cost of the Air Force One project, according to a person familiar with the discussion.

But he also made his post about the Air Force One upgrade just minutes after The Chicago Tribune published comments from Boeing’s chief executive, Dennis Muilenburg, suggesting that the president-elect’s trade policies could hurt the company, which does substantial business in China.

Trump did not focus on Boeing broadly. Instead, he focused on the Air Force One upgrade, telling reporters at Trump Tower, “The plane is totally out of control.”

“It’s going to be over $4 billion for the Air Force One program, and I think it’s ridiculous,” he said. “I think Boeing is doing a little bit of a number. We want Boeing to make a lot of money, but not that much money.”

In a statement after Trump’s Twitter post, Boeing said it had a $170 million contract to study the equipment that a redesigned Air Force One might need. That project has just gotten underway, so billions of dollars in cost overruns at this point appear to be impossible.

“Some of the statistics that have been, uh, cited, shall we say, don’t appear to reflect the nature of the financial agreement between Boeing and the Department of Defense,” the White House press secretary, Josh Earnest, said.

Air Force officials said they were proposing to spend $2.7 billion over the next five years to research, develop and test communications technologies and other advanced systems. The Air Force would then buy two 747-8 aircraft, which normally cost airlines $350 million to $400 million apiece, and refit them to include all the new systems and handle extra weight.

The planes would not be ready to fly until 2024, so Trump’s $4 billion estimate may ultimately be about correct. However, since nothing but the basic study contract has been awarded yet, his administration could cut back or reshape the Air Force proposal in any way it or Congress wanted.

“We look forward to working with the U.S. Air Force on subsequent phases of the program, allowing us to deliver the best planes for the president at the best value for the American taxpayer,” Boeing said.

Aviation analysts were more blunt.

“This is getting ridiculous fast, when an important policy and acquisition decision is being made by Twitter,” said Richard L. Aboulafia, an aviation consultant with the Teal Group in Fairfax, Va.

Trump’s Air Force One post came out of the blue: He had not focused in the campaign on the cost of Boeing’s plans for a next-generation presidential plane.

Last week, Muilenburg, Boeing’s chief executive, said that one-fourth of all the commercial airplanes it sold were for use in China, where Boeing is in a tense competition with Europe’s Airbus, its main rival.