Boeing responded to a stern round of questioning in the UK House of Commons Wednesday over its decision to challenge the legality of Bombardier’s sale of C Series jets to Delta Air Lines, in the process characterizing its actions as a kind of defense of free markets. During a meeting with the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, Boeing Europe president Sir Michael Arthur rejected claims that the company’s appeal to the U.S. Commerce Department to place countervailing duties on the C Series sale to Delta undermined employment at Bombardier’s Short Brothers plant in Belfast, the site of the airplane’s composite wing production. Rather, he insisted that Boeing employs twice as many people in the UK than it did three years ago, and that trade union claims that the antidumping case contributed to a decline in employment at the Belfast site serve only to obscure Bombardier’s wider financial difficulties.
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