TACO – Trump Always Chickens Out!

Thunder Bay – NEWS – For the folks who build Bombardier jets in Canada, the back and forth out of Washington this week landed close to the bone. After months of uncertainty over a threat that could have shut the company out of its biggest market, U.S. President Donald Trump says he is now ready to “take care of Bombardier.”

It is a reversal that matters a great deal to the thousands of Canadians whose paycheques trace back to this company, and it is the kind of story our reporter, who lives in this community and writes for the neighbors who depend on these jobs rather than for outsiders passing through, has been watching closely since the trade dispute began.

Back in September, Trump threatened to block Bombardier jets from being sold in the United States altogether. He put it bluntly on Truth Social on September 7th: “NO MORE SELLING BOMBARDIER IN THE UNITED STATES! Their products aren’t good enough!” He added that if the company wanted access to the American market, it needed to build there instead of “treating America like a piggybank.”

That threat sat over Bombardier for months, part of the broader trade dispute between Canada and the United States. But the tone shifted dramatically on Monday, when Trump visited Kansas and learned firsthand just how deep Bombardier’s roots run in Wichita, where the company employs about 1,500 people.

“We’re going to take care of Bombardier,” Trump told local station 12 News during his visit. He repeated the message later that day at a rally, telling the crowd, “I’m going to be helping a certain air company get themselves straightened away… I’ll be helping them because I always viewed them as a Canadian company. But now I find out they have a presence here, and we’re not hurting them if they’re in Kansas. So, we’ll take care of those people and the jobs.”

Dominic LeBlanc, the federal minister responsible for Canada-U.S. trade, has spent months making exactly that argument. He said Bombardier has employed hundreds and thousands of people in the United States for a long time, and that Republican lawmakers raised concerns directly with him over the summer after Trump’s original comments.

The political backdrop in Kansas helps explain the shift. Trump was there campaigning for Republican Senator Roger Marshall, who is in an unusually tight re-election race against Democrat Adam Hamilton. Kansas has not sent a Democrat to the U.S. Senate since 1932, but polling has shown the contest closer than expected this year. Marshall was one of the Kansas lawmakers who reached out to the White House after Trump’s September threat, and Trump specifically credited Marshall’s involvement when he announced the administration’s change of heart.

The numbers help explain why Wichita carries weight in this story. Bombardier employs about 3,500 people across the United States, and more than 40 percent of those jobs are based in Wichita, which also serves as the company’s U.S. and defence headquarters. Just last week, Bombardier announced a 50 million dollar investment in that Wichita operation.

What it means for residents

For people here connected to Bombardier, whether through direct employment, suppliers or the broader economic ripple effect, this reversal removes one layer of uncertainty that had been hanging over the company since September. A blanket U.S. ban on Bombardier jets would have struck at a company that is not simply a Canadian manufacturer selling into the American market, it is an employer woven into communities on both sides of the border. LeBlanc’s comments suggest that reality, Bombardier’s deep U.S. workforce, is exactly what shifted the calculation in Washington.

Still, LeBlanc was careful not to declare victory. He said Canada is working toward a deal with the United States that serves the interests of the entire Canadian economy, not just one sector or one company. That broader trade negotiation remains unresolved, and Bombardier’s situation is one piece of a much larger file between the two countries.

No specific timeline was given for when a fuller Canada-U.S. trade arrangement might be reached, or for how Trump’s promise to “help” Bombardier will be formalized. For now, the company’s workers on both sides of the border are left with a reprieve rather than a resolution, and residents here will be watching closely for what comes next.