Is Boeing too big to ground?
Is President Donald Trump doing the proper thing by refusing to ground (as many other countries have) the Boeing 737 MAX airliner that was involved in two fatal crashes? Or is Trump taking care of his own interests in protecting the iconic American company BA, -6.15% ?
See, that’s the problem with crony capitalism, especially with a president who is actively running his multiple businesses out of the Oval Office in a completely opaque manner. You never know when the government is putting the public’s or the president’s interests first.
I have no idea whether the plane is safe to fly or not. I’ll leave that up to the technical experts whose attention to detail and zero-tolerance attitude have made air travel safer and safer ever since Orville and Wilbur first took flight.
What I object to is having politicians make that call, whether it’s Trump or Elaine Chao, his politically connected but otherwise unqualified transportation secretary. The Federal Aviation Administration ought to be above suspicion, but how can it be when so many other parts of the government are run on behalf of the corporations they are supposed to regulate?
Read: Europe has now banned Boeing’s 737 Max — should U.S. passengers be concerned?
To an American Firster, there is almost no American company more valuable than Boeing. It employs about 150,000 workers, exports thousands of planes around the globe, and, together with the European Airbus AIR, +1.33% consortium, completely dominates the world market for airliners.
Boeing also manufactures many of the weapons that makes the U.S. military supreme. Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan, who worked up to a top management job in his 30-year career at Boeing, has been accused of having a Boeing bias.
Bigfoot in the Dow
Boeing has a very big foot print in the stock market, particularly the high-profile Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, -0.38% When Boeing’s shares collapse, Trump takes it personally, because to him, the stock market is the yardstick of his greatness.
The last thing I want when I get on a plane is the knowledge that the CEO of the company that built it has lobbied the president to keep it flying. I want independent experts to judge whether the plane is safe, not an Oval Office ego or some CEO whose stock options depend upon his company’s spotless reputation.
Earlier Tuesday, Trump seemed to suggest that the plane ought to be grounded. In a series of tweets, he said that “airplanes had gotten too complex to fly.” He waxed nostalgic about the good old days when it was the skill of the pilot, not elaborate electronics and engineering, that kept the plane aloft.
But that wasn’t what he said a year ago in another tweet in which he claimed credit for the fact that there hadn’t been any fatalities on a commercial airline flight anywhere in the world the previous year.
Air travel is as safe as it is precisely because the people who design and fly planes — and those who regulate the industry — have been focused for 100-plus years on finding errors and fixing them, not on protecting egos or the financial interests of corporate leaders or politicians.
Throughout his presidency, Trump has closely identified himself with some companies, and declared others to be his mortal enemies. But what happens when his duties require him to punish his friends, or reward his enemies?
The danger of crony capitalism is that Trump may make airplanes just as safe as the too-big-to-fail banks.
