Airbus, with eye on U.S. race, says it will be ready for higher tariffs

Airbus, the world’s largest commercial airplane manufacturer, said on Wednesday that it was preparing for the possibility that the United States would impose new tariffs on all imports, and that the company would deal with the higher charges by passing them along to its airline customers. In a call with reporters, Airbus’s CE, Guillaume Faury, said the European company was monitoring the U.S. presidential election next week and would be prepared for the possibility of a new 10% tariff. Former President Donald J. Trump, the Republican candidate, has made sweeping tariffs a critical plank of his economic platform if he wins. Faury said any new tariff would be passed along to Airbus’s airline customers, in much the same way that Airbus dealt with a tariff that Trump put on European aircraft in 2020 as part of a long-running airplane subsidy dispute. “So that’s something we will be discussing with our customers” if necessary, Faury said. “But it puts them in a difficult place of adding an additional cost on what they have ordered and what they’re procuring,” he said. “That’s basically mainly a decision of the state that has to be borne by the companies.” He added: “So we are prepared. We know what it feels like. We don’t believe that’s helping aviation and the competitiveness of the airlines and the aviation industry, but it’s something we would be able to manage.”<br/>