Trump’s Tariffs: How Boeing Lost China in 7 Days

179 jets scrapped, COMAC ascendant, and a $1B cash flow disaster.

5 min readApr 17, 2025

Trump’s tariff war as good as overnight handed China the keys to the global aviation kingdom and left Boeing bleeding on the tarmac. Boeing’s collapse in China is not a story of bad luck or a random market shift. It’s the direct, predictable, and utterly reckless result of the trade war unleashed by Donald Trump. The world’s largest aerospace company, once a symbol of US ingenuity and global reach, now finds itself locked out of the most important aviation market on earth — by its own government’s hand.

It goes almost without saying that Trump’s trade war was never a genius move in a class chess match. That’s not a secret. It was a barroom brawl, all bluster and bravado, with no thought for the long-term consequences. The tariffs — slapped on everything from steel and aluminium to finished aircraft — were supposed to bring jobs back to the US, punish China, and restore some mythical golden age of manufacturing. What they’ve actually done is hand China the upper hand, cripple Boeing’s prospects, and threaten the livelihoods of thousands of US-ian workers.

We know this tariff story how it rolled out this week. China’s response was swift and brutal. After Trump’s administration imposed tariffs as high as 125% on Chinese goods, Beijing retaliated in kind, targeting U.S. aircraft with tariffs that made Boeing jets prohibitively expensive for Chinese airlines. The result? China’s airlines have been ordered to suspend all new purchases of Boeing planes and halt procurement of U.S.-made aviation parts. On current estimates, that’s a pretty wild 179 aircraft — nearly $20 billion in business — potentially gone in a single stroke, with the ripple effects set to devastate Boeing’s cash flow and future order book.

We’ve all watched this unfold the last week (yes, it’s only a week!) with a sense of grim inevitability. The aviation industry is not a simple widget factory. It’s a vast, interconnected web of suppliers, engineers, and logistics experts, all working across borders and time zones. When you throw a wrench into that machine — by jacking up the price of raw materials, disrupting supply chains, and making your products unaffordable to your biggest customers — you don’t just hurt the company at the top. You hurt everyone, from the machinist in Wichita to the software engineer in Seattle.

Boeing’s defenders will point to the company’s backlog, its domestic sourcing, its ability to weather storms. But that’s wishful thinking. The Chinese market accounts for 20% of global aircraft demand over the next two decades. Losing access to that market isn’t a temporary setback — it’s a strategic disaster. Airbus, Boeing’s European rival, is already moving in to fill the void, and China’s own COMAC is waiting in the wings, eager to take a bigger slice of the pie. Once those relationships are built, they don’t come back. Trust, once lost, is almost impossible to regain.

The financial impact is immediate and severe. Boeing’s stock dropped nearly 5% on the news, and analysts estimate the company could lose over a billion dollars in cash flow in 2025 alone. But the deeper wound is to America’s reputation as a reliable trading partner. When you weaponize trade policy for political gain, you send a message to the world: the United States cannot be trusted to honour its commitments. That’s simply self-sabotage.

The irony is almost too much to bear. The tariffs were supposed to make US-made more competitive. Instead, they’ve priced Boeing out of one of the world’s top 3 aircraft markets and handed a golden opportunity to the brilliant European, Airbus. With Boeing’s costs rising and Chinese retaliation shutting it out of the world’s fastest-growing aviation market, Airbus faces fewer barriers and can even shift production to avoid tariffs. The result? Airbus becomes the go-to choice for airlines in both China (and even in the U.S. itself)., while Boeing loses ground and market share. In this trade war, Airbus is the clear winner, thanks to a policy that was supposed to make America great again.

This tariff war is a textbook case of short-termism combined with negligence. The administration claimed it was fighting for US workers, but the real victims are the very people it claimed to protect. Boeing’s supply chain stretches across the country, supporting tens of thousands of jobs. When orders dry up, those jobs go with them. Every supplier, every subcontractor, every small business that depends on the aerospace industry is now at risk.

Some will argue that this is just the cost of doing business in a tough world. That’s nonsense. Trade is not a zero-sum game and if you treat it like it is you will get kicked in the arse. It’s a complex, mutually beneficial relationship that, when managed wisely, lifts all boats. The Trump administration’s approach — escalate, threaten, retaliate — has left everyone worse off. US farmers, tech companies, and now aerospace giants are all paying the price for a policy built on slogans instead of strategy.

I remember speaking to a group of engineering students a few years ago (about global sustainability, not engineering, of course). They were bright, ambitious, eager to build the next generation of aircraft. I told them: “The world is not waiting for you. If you want to lead, you have to be better, faster, smarter than the competition.” What I didn’t say — what I never imagined I’d have to say — is that your own government might kneecap you before you even get started.

Boeing’s crisis is a warning. When you play with fire, you get burned. When you treat trade as a weapon, you end up shooting yourself in the foot. The world is watching, and the message is clear: the US’ word is no longer its bond. That’s not just bad for business. That’s bad for the country.

The lesson here is harsh but necessary. Leadership requires wisdom, patience, and a willingness to look beyond the next news cycle. The tariff war was reckless, short-sighted, and ultimately self-defeating. Boeing’s pain is real, and it’s just the beginning. It is not even clear to me Boeing can survive this if they lose those 179 and all future orders. They will obviously have to pivot massively, redirecting sales to other, smaller markets, and many of them, to replace these orders. They will, but it will take time. This is a disaster of the US’ own making, and the bill is coming due.

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Trump’s Tariffs: How Boeing Lost China in 7 Days

179 jets scrapped, COMAC ascendant, and a $1B cash flow disaster.

Written by Brian Iselin

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