Kansas Republican Senators Jerry Moran and Roger Marshall are pushing back against President Trump’s threat to ban Canadian aerospace company Bombardier from selling planes in the United States.
Trump announced Monday that Bombardier would no longer be permitted to sell aircraft in the American market, escalating an already bitter trade dispute with Canada.
The threat arrives amid a rapidly intensifying trade conflict, with Canada’s retaliatory tariffs on $27.6 billion in American products taking effect Tuesday.
Those Canadian measures followed the Trump administration’s own 50 percent tariffs on approximately $20 billion worth of Canadian imports, which took effect last month.
Trump has also threatened additional tariffs on imported cars, trucks, auto parts, and steel, with those measures set to begin next year.
Moran, Kansas’s senior Republican senator, stressed that Bombardier is a significant employer in Wichita, a city that bills itself as the Air Capital of the World.
“This afternoon, I reached out to the Trump administration to make certain the President is aware of the significant contributions of Bombardier to Kansas and the importance of its presence in Wichita to many Kansas workers at Bombardier and in the Bombardier supply chain,” Moran posted on X.
Moran noted that Bombardier’s Wichita operations support a local workforce “of more than a thousand employees,” and pledged to continue attracting aerospace and defense manufacturers to the state.
Marshall, who is facing Democratic candidate Adam Hamilton in a competitive Kansas Senate race, said he has already raised the issue directly with the president.
“I’m going to fight to keep Bombardier’s over 1,200 Kansas jobs. I’ve already taken that concern inside the Oval Office,” Marshall posted on social media Tuesday.
Marshall also pointed to the scale of American consumption of Bombardier’s products, arguing the company’s deep ties to the U.S. market strengthen the case for keeping its Kansas operations intact.
“America buys more than half of what Bombardier sells. If that’s the market, more of those planes should be built here,” Marshall said, echoing Trump’s broader push to expand domestic manufacturing.
Bombardier employs roughly 3,500 people across the United States and reports spending more than $2.5 billion annually with American suppliers.
In a statement issued Monday, Bombardier described itself as “a strong contributor” to the American aerospace industry, saying it is responsible for “creating tens of thousands of jobs across the United States.”
The company said its American workforce is spread across sites in Kansas, Texas, Arizona, Florida, Connecticut, Illinois, Delaware, California, and Washington D.C.
The pushback from Moran and Marshall represents the latest instance of Republican senators clashing with Trump over his Canada trade policy, with midterm elections now just months away.
