Trump declares Canada’s Bombardier jets ‘aren’t good enough’ in latest attack of trade war

President Donald Trump called for Bombardier to be shut out of the American market, declaring in a social media post that the Canadian plane manufacturer’s aircraft "aren't good enough.""NO MORE SELLING BOMBARDIER IN THE UNITED STATES!" he wrote in a Truth Social post Monday. "If they want our Market, they must build here, and stop treating America like a 'piggybank.'"Trump’s post closed with a call to "BUY AMERICAN. FLY ON AMERICAN AIRLINERS. ENJOY AMERICAN LIQUOR AND BEVERAGES. SAIL ON LAKE AMERICA.” Monday's post lands a fortnight into a renewed trade war with Canada that shows no sign of easing. The U.S.’s 50 percent tariffs took effect last month on roughly $28 billion of Canadian exports after Prime Minister Mark Carney walked away from trade talks. Ottawa has promised to retaliate dollar-for-dollar and Canada’s tariffs are set to begin at midnight Tuesday.It is the second time this year the president has threatened Bombardier, a Montreal-based manufacturer, by name and appeared to be the latest escalation in the trade war he started with America’s northern neighbor last month.Trump’s 50 percent tariffs took effect last month on roughly $28 billion of Canadian exports after Prime Minister Mark Carney walked away from trade talks, and Ottawa has promised to retaliate dollar-for-dollar (Reuters)It comes five days after Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that the first threat to Bombardier had begun as a favor for a wealthy friend who he claimed was unable to buy a Gulfstream jet — made by an American manufacturer — in Canada. Trump claimed Canada was unfairly preventing Gulfstream from selling aircraft to protect the company’s domestic competitor and threatened to bar Bombardier from American markets in response.The president has no authority to bar a foreign manufacturer's aircraft from being sold in the U.S. Certification is the responsibility of the Federal Aviation Administration and is granted or withdrawn on airworthiness grounds. Trump made a similar claim on January 29, saying the U.S. was "decertifying" the Bombardier Global Express - however the aircraft was never decertified, and White House officials clarified at the time that any restriction would apply only to new aircraft rather than the more than 5,400 Canadian-made planes and helicopters already on the U.S. register.Several of the claims in Monday’s Truth Social post are false, and one of them the president disproved himself last week. He wrote that Canada "even blocked Gulfstream Aerospace from doing business in Canada — Completely unjust and unfair! That Era is OVER!" Transport Canada certified the Gulfstream G500 and G600 on February 16 and the G700 and G800 on February 23. Trump described the resolution himself in the Oval Office Wednesday, claiming credit for it.Trump also repeated the baseless assertion that Canada "blocks our GREAT American Banks." Sixteen U.S. bank subsidiaries and branches operate in Canada under the country's Schedule II framework. The oldest of them, Citibank, has been there since 1919.Canada does not actually bar Gulfstream jets from being sold there (AFP/Getty)The president's first threat against Bombardier, he said last week, started with a phone call about a private jet.Speaking in the Oval Office last Wednesday at an event convened to celebrate the summer travel season, Trump volunteered the account unprompted, in response to a question about whether trade talks with Ottawa would resume."I had a case about a week ago where a friend of mine was buying the Gulfstream jet, and he said, 'You know, it's a crazy thing. We're not able — that Canada won't certify Gulfstream,'" the president said."Gulfstream is the best private jet, considered the best of the best, and they won't certify it in Canada because they make a competitor, Bombardier Global Express, and so their competitor didn't want them to have competition."The friend, Trump said, put him in touch with the manufacturer directly. "He's very friendly with Gulfstream. He told the head of Gulfstream to call me, gave him the numbers. We called. We spoke."What the head of Gulfstream told him, according to the president, was that the company had spent "$60 million trying to get certified in Canada" over roughly nine years without success."So I immediately said, 'I'm putting a major tariff on Bombardier and other things that they sent until they're certified,'" Trump said. "They got certified in two hours."Trump has purported to rename Lake Ontario amid his ongoing feud with Canada (The Canadian Press)He then described a call from Carney, whom he did not name. "I got a call from the Prime Minister. 'President, what seems to be the problem?' I said, well, you have a little problem. For nine years, you didn't certify Gulfstream." He said he told Carney the U.S. would tariff "various products, including Bombardier," and that "within 30 minutes, I guess it took maybe less — everything got certified.""He told me they spent millions and millions of dollars on legal fees over about a nine-year period trying to do it," Trump said. "I did it in a matter of moments."The certifications took 26 days, not two hours. The tariff was never imposed.In the same exchange, Trump claimed the U.S. loses "anywhere from 60 to $100 billion" a year in cross-border trade deficits. The U.S. Trade Representative's office puts the 2025 goods deficit with Canada at $48.3 billion, down 21 percent on the year, against a $27.7 billion services surplus — a combined gap of roughly $21 billion.