WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump opened a new front in his trade fight with Canada on Monday, declaring that Canadian aerospace giant Bombardier should no longer be allowed to sell planes in the United States unless it manufactures in America — a demand that quickly drew pushback from Republican Sen. Jerry Moran of Kansas, home to Bombardier’s U.S. headquarters.

“NO MORE SELLING BOMBARDIER IN THE UNITED STATES!” Trump wrote on Truth Social, adding that the company’s products “aren’t good enough!” He argued Bombardier depends on “American Buyers, American Companies, American Airports, and American Service” while, in his telling, Canada blocks U.S. banks and companies. “If they want our Market,” he wrote, “they must build here, and stop treating America like a ‘piggybank.’”

Hours later, Moran said he contacted the Trump administration to stress Bombardier’s footprint in Wichita. “The presence of Bombardier in Wichita supports a local workforce of more than a thousand employees, who contribute their talent and expertise to our nation’s defense and aerospace capabilities,” Moran wrote on X. He said he wanted to make sure the president understood “the importance of its presence in Wichita to many Kansas workers at Bombardier and in the Bombardier supply chain.”

Bombardier, in a Monday statement reported by NBC News, called itself “a strong contributor” to the American aerospace industry and said it creates “tens of thousands of jobs across the United States,” with sites in Kansas, Texas, Arizona, Florida, Connecticut, Illinois, Delaware, California, Washington, D.C., and New Jersey, plus employment in more than 20 states. The company said wings for its Global business jets are built by U.S. workers in Red Oak, Texas, and that flight-control components are made at a Los Angeles-area facility, with a new Fort Wayne, Indiana, site due later this year.

The clash lands as Canada’s retaliatory tariffs on roughly C$20–28 billion in U.S. goods are set to take effect at 12:01 a.m. Eastern on Tuesday, Sept. 8 — matching U.S. duties dollar-for-dollar in a fight that has already drawn warnings from border-state Republicans. Tit-for-tat industrial policy may play well as campaign rhetoric; it also puts GOP senators who represent real aerospace payrolls in the awkward position of defending a Canadian brand against a president from their own party.

Sources