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Nearly a quarter of Boeing's sales come from China.

>China's top three airlines - Air China (601111.SS), opens new tab, China Eastern Airlines (600115.SS), opens new tab and China Southern Airlines (600029.SS), opens new tab - have plans to take delivery of 45, 53 and 81 Boeing planes, respectively, between 2025-2027.

  A 125% duty would significantly raise the cost of Boeing jets bound for Chinese carriers, making them a financial burden and potentially prompting airlines to consider alternatives like Airbus and domestic player COMAC.
Resulting in footgun'ing Boeing to the tune of 179 passenger aircraft and several decades of parts.

Good news for Airbus et al. though.

Interesting to see what will happen to the Comac C919 which relies on a large number of US parts including the French/US leap engine.

I would expect them to have substitutes for all of the components but a trade embargo will likely set the plane back when it comes to getting approvals for operating in other countries.

Chinese give tariff exceptions to things that suit them. There has not been talk about a trade embargo as far as I know.
In addition, production of LEAP engines is split between the US and France.
Chinese domestic replacement engine CJ-1000 should be certified by within two years. Flight tests started 2023. It has similar dimensions as CFM LEAP-1C and is intended to replace it.

7-years ago I would have sworn that Chinese are 20 years behind, but they have been working really hard.

The Chinese story parallels the rise of Japanese tech in many ways, even with a different set of rules at the base.

In the 50s to 70s Japanese products were known as absolute crap. There was a meme that Japanese knock-offs often contained the same errors from the original design. This changed drastically once the generation that was tutored by people with experience started joining the work force.

Re Chinese products there’s still a cult of “crap products “ but they were also among the first to market 5g technology, to the point that the west had to tell their market to wait until domestic manufacturers had caught up.

All countries give tariff exemptions to things that suit them. The US doesn't levy tariffs on oil and gas imports, for example.
Trump admin has had rumblings about preventing Comac's access to the leap engine all the way back to the first admin.

They can easily do this.

France is going to benefit hugely from a China/US trade war. Actually, many countries will benefit, especially European ones.