Delivering a big defeat to Boeing Co, a US trade panel on Friday ruled that the US aircraft giant was not harmed by competition from Canada’s Bombardier Inc.
The 4-0 decision by the independent International Trade Commission (ITC) effectively blocks US President Donald Trump’s administration from slapping 292 percent tariffs on Bombardier.
The US Department of Commerce last year ruled that the Canadian firm had unfairly received government subsidies and sold its C-series planes at artificially low prices in the US. The trade panel disagreed.
The case threatened to raise tensions between Washington and US allies Canada and Britain, which has a Bombardier plant in Northern Ireland.
Bombardier praised the ruling as a “victory for innovation, competition and the rule of law.”
Boeing said it was “disappointed” and vowed to continue to document the damage from “illegal subsidies and dumped pricing.”
Boeing had charged that Bombardier sold Delta Air Lines Inc 75 CS100 aircraft for less than it cost to build them, but Delta said Boeing did not even make the medium-sized jets it needed.
Delta said it was “pleased by the ITC’s ruling rejecting Boeing’s anticompetitive attempt to deny US airlines and the US traveling public access to the state-of-the-art 110-seat CS100 aircraft.”
The Trump administration has repeatedly clashed with Canada over trade, including Canadian softwood lumber imports. It has launched contentious talks to renegotiate the 24-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico — a pact that Trump has called a job-killing disaster.
Bombardier in October last year sold a majority stake in the C Series program to Europe’s Airbus SE for no cost. The C Series headquarters was slated to stay in the Montreal area, but a second assembly line for the 100 to 150-seat plane is scheduled to be set up at Airbus’ plant in Mobile, Alabama.
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