The Wall Street Journal reported this week that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is applying freshly heightened regulatory scrutiny to Boeing over recent quality issues and safety scares. But Boeing also finds itself beholden to the Chinese Communist Party for help liquidating old Max 8 inventory.
Last November, 400 American business leaders eagerly dined with Xi Jinping ahead of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit. The CEOs sought CCP agreement on various issues, such as an assurance of no more iPhone bans. But these favors don’t come for free. Xi, whose economy is cratering with failed investments, could use a bailout with the kind of money that you can only print in Washington, D.C. But why beg, when he can program a swarm of politically connected elite drone-lobbyists to go beg for him?
Nature abhors a vacuum, and many American CEOs will do whatever it takes to fill the vacuum so that China can remain whole and make good on trade promises that will enrich them personally.
One such participant was Stan Deal, Boeing’s executive vice president and CEO of its commercial airplanes division, who attended the dinner in his latest round of kowtowing to get China to buy 85 airplanes. These are the remaining 737 Max 8 aircraft that China had ordered, but Boeing had not yet built or delivered, prior to the two tragic crashes in 2018-2019 and subsequent grounding and reapproval of this fleet in 2020. The Max 8 saga is an old story but continues to
