Every time this man pulls out his phone and Tweets his latest irritation, the world will react.
Buckle your seatbelts. It's going to be a bumpy ride.
Boeing is building a brand new 747 Air Force One for future presidents, but costs are out of control, more than $4 billion. Cancel order!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 6, 2016
Were Boeing to lose a $4 billion contract, that would certainly cause people to be skeptical of future earnings. But this, as seems always to be the case with Donald Trump tweets, is not the full story.
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His campaign spent $6.7 million on his personal aircraft after he announced his candidacy, and he has called Air Force One "a step down" from his personal aircraft "in every way." (Not size, mind you.) Once Trump received a Secret Service detail, the agency paid $1.6 million for its agents to travel with him -- money that went to TAG Air, a company owned by Trump.
[...]
As it turns out, though, the Trump tweet may not have been unprompted. CNN's Jake Tapper noted on Twitter that shortly before the tweet (which was posted at 8:52 a.m. Eastern) the Chicago Tribune posted an article quoting the [Boeing]'s CEO, Dennis Muilenberg.
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"Anyone who paid attention to the recent campaigns and the election results realizes that one of the overarching themes was apprehension about free and fair trade," Muilenberg said at the Illinois Manufacturing Association last week, as noted by Tribune columnist Robert Reed.
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"Last year, we delivered 495 737s from our factory in Renton, Wash., to customers around the world," Muilenberg continued, noting that a third of the planes were sent to China.
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Those are pointed comments. It was Trump, of course, who robustly criticized free trade during the general election.
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Trump's tweet tanked Boeing's stock price, albeit only briefly. In 2013, Trump tweeted about having just bought stock in Boeing ("great company!"), but his spokesman said on Tuesday that the president-elect no longer holds stock in Boeing, or anything else, having sold it all in June.
WaPo
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