Trump Says He Supports Selling U.S. Jet Engines to China -- Update
February 18 2020 - 1:10PM
Dow Jones News
By Ted Mann
WASHINGTON -- President Trump said Tuesday that he would support
the continued export of U.S.-made jet engines to China, taking
sides in a continuing dispute within the administration about
restricting high-tech exports over piracy concerns.
"We don't want to make it impossible to do business with us,"
Mr. Trump said in a series of tweets Tuesday morning. "That will
only mean that orders will go to someplace else. As an example, I
want China to buy our jet engines, the best in the World."
The tweet suggested that Mr. Trump had come down on the side of
General Electric Co. in a debate within his administration, where
some hard-liners on China had hoped to halt the export of jet
engines being manufactured for a new Chinese-made airliner, the
Comac C919.
The White House didn't immediately respond to a request for
comment.
GE co-produces the engines in a joint venture with Safran SA of
France. It has privately argued that the exports should be allowed
to continue, contending fears that the engines could be
reverse-engineered were overblown, people familiar with the
discussions said.
Mr. Trump's Tuesday-morning tweet stream didn't explicitly
mention a related White House debate about limiting Chinese access
to chip-making technology. The Wall Street Journal has reported
that officials in the administration are considering new trade
restrictions aimed at cutting off Chinese access to semiconductor
technology.
Mr. Trump didn't directly address the semiconductor issue in his
tweets. But the industry thought Mr. Trump's overall message that
he didn't want to make it "impossible to do business with us" was a
sign that he would oppose new restrictions on their China
sales.
"We applaud President Trump's tweets supporting U.S. companies
being able to sell products to China and opposing proposed
regulations that would unduly curtail that ability," said John
Neuffer, chief executive of the Semiconductor Industry Association,
in a written statement on Tuesday. "As we have discussed with the
Administration, sales of non-sensitive, commercial products to
China drive semiconductor research and innovation, which is
critical to America's economic strength and national security."
An internal administration meeting was scheduled for later this
week to debate the China trade proposals under consideration,
including whether to halt the engine shipments. Members of Mr.
Trump's cabinet are scheduled to discuss the engine issue, among
other trade measures aimed at China, on Feb. 28, according to a
person familiar with the matter.
Hard-liners who pushed to block the engine shipments did so in
part because they hoped to cripple the development of China's C919
passenger jet, the people familiar with the discussions said. China
hopes that the narrowbody airliner, which is scheduled to enter
service in 2021, will become a global competitor to the dominant
models produced by Boeing Co. and Airbus SE.
But blocking the engine exports would have come as a shock to a
major U.S. manufacturer that has invested for years in a global
manufacturing footprint, including in China. GE has received
licenses from the Commerce Department since 2014 for the
engine-export program. The Comac engines are a variant of the LEAP
jet engine produced by CFM International, the joint venture of
General Electric and Safran. The variant used on the C919 accounts
for a small fraction of the total production of LEAP, which has
been a commercial success for GE amid a surge in global orders for
single-aisle airliners.
As recently as March 2019, the Trump administration had issued
new licenses allowing CFM to ship engines to China.
A GE spokeswoman declined to comment on the Trump tweets.
"GE has provided products and services in the global marketplace
for decades," a GE spokeswoman said over the weekend, after the
Journal reported on the proposal to halt engine shipments. "We
aggressively protect and defend our intellectual property and work
closely with the U.S. government to fulfill our responsibilities
and shared security and economic interests."
Before Tuesday, the people familiar with the discussions said
Mr. Trump hadn't weighed in on the trade matter. In his tweets
Tuesday morning, the president suggested that he had told members
of his cabinet that he had decreed that new restrictions on foreign
sales wouldn't be imposed.
"I want to make it EASY to do business with the United States,
not difficult," the president tweeted. "Everyone in my
Administration is being so instructed, with no excuses...THE UNITED
STATES IS OPEN FOR BUSINESS..."
Write to Ted Mann at ted.mann@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
February 18, 2020 12:55 ET (17:55 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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