Canada says Boeing petition before ITC groundless

The Canadian government told the U.S. International Trade Commission today that a petition by Boeing, which claims that it’s harmed by a Bombardier Commercial Aircraft deal with Delta Air Lines, is based on “speculation and conjecture.”    The Canadian government told the U.S. International Trade Commission today that a petition by Boeing, which claims that it’s harmed by a Bombardier Commercial Aircraft deal with Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines, is groundless.
   “The case before you pushes beyond the boundaries of the commission’s threat of material injury analysis,” said Canadian Ambassador David MacNaughton in testimony during an ITC public hearing today. 
   “Boeing’s assertion that future imports from Canada threaten to cause material injury is necessarily based on just the type of ‘speculation and conjecture’ that is prohibited under both U.S. and international law,” he said.
   MacNaughton pointed out to the ITC commissioners that Boeing doesn’t manufacture the size passenger plane that Bombardier sold to Delta.
   “It is difficult to understand how a company with such an enviable commercial and financial position and an order book stretching nearly seven years into the future could file a case complaining of a threat of future injury by a new entrant to the market. Boeing has been quite candid that its target is not the plane that exists now, but the competitive threat that Bombardier may pose in the future,” he said.
   Last year, Bombardier reached an agreement with Delta to sell 75 CS100 passenger planes, valued at about $5.6 billion. With this order, the largest in Bombardier’s history, Delta becomes the C-Series aircraft’s largest customer. Deliveries are scheduled to begin in spring 2018.
   According to the Canadian ambassador, U.S.-made components contribute to more than half the value of Bombardier’s 100- to 150-seat C-Series planes. 
   “These components are supplied by American companies, directly supporting roughly 23,000 well-paying jobs in many U.S. states, including Connecticut, Florida, New Jersey, Washington, New York, Ohio, Kansas, Pennsylvania and Colorado,” MacNaughton said. “Simply put, an affirmative determination would put U.S. jobs in jeopardy. There is no reason to believe that an affirmative determination would lead Boeing to create any more jobs to compensate for this loss to the U.S. workforce, particularly given its current massive backlog.”
    In May 2017, based on petitions filed by Boeing, the Commerce Department initiated antidumping and countervailing duty investigations into the import of the Bombardier passenger planes from Canada.
   Dumping occurs when a foreign company sells a product in the United States at less than fair value, while countervailable subsidies are payments made by foreign governments to domestic companies based on their export performance or use of domestic inputs over imported goods during manufacturing.
   The ITC was scheduled to make its preliminary injury determinations for these petitions by June 12, but decided to extend its investigation.