Boeing to cut approximately 17,000 jobs over the coming months
(NEW YORK) — Boeing will reduce the size of its total workforce by 10% over the coming months, CEO Kelly Ortberg said in a letter to employees on Friday.
That amounts to around 17,000 jobs, based on the company’s December 2023 total workforce numbers.
Ortberg said due to the workforce reductions, Boeing would not proceed with the next cycle of furloughs.
Ortberg also said the 777X program would be delayed until 2026, the 767 freighter program would end in 2027 and the company expects “substantial new losses” in Boeing Defense, Space & Security this quarter.
“Our business is in a difficult position, and it is hard to overstate the challenges we face together,” said Ortberg. “Beyond navigating our current environment, restoring our company requires tough decisions and we will have to make structural changes to ensure we can stay competitive and deliver for our customers over the long term.”
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(WASHINGTON) — Former President Donald Trump has raised few policies on the campaign trail more often than tariffs, which he says would rejuvenate manufacturing, create jobs, restrain immigration and help bankroll childcare, among other benefits.
In recent days, he has claimed another advantage of tariffs: They don’t require support from Congress. “I don’t need Congress, but they’ll approve it,” Trump said at a campaign event in Smithton, Pennsylvania, on Monday. “I’ll have the right to impose them myself if they don’t.”
Some economists have said higher tariffs could expand certain areas of U.S. manufacturing, but the policy risks rekindling inflation since importers would likely offset tax payments with higher prices. A potential trade war could hurt U.S. exporters and slow hiring, they said.
However, Trump is largely accurate in his description of the wide latitude enjoyed by the president in setting and implementing some tariffs, experts said. But, they added, Trump’s ambitious tariff agenda could test the limits of that authority, drawing court challenges and opposition from Congress with results that are difficult to predict.
“Will we get a reckoning if Trump gets elected and does what he says he wants to do?” Mary Lovely, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics who studies trade policy, told ABC News. “I think we’ll get one very quickly.”
In response to ABC News’ request for comment, a representative of the Republican National Committee pointed to remarks made by Trump at a campaign event in Georgia on Tuesday.
“The word tariff properly used is a beautiful word,” Trump said. “A lot of bad people didn’t like that word, but now they’re finding out I was right, and we will take in hundreds of billions of dollars into our Treasury and use that money to benefit the American citizens.”
“And it will not cause inflation, by the way. And you know, I took in from China hundreds of billions of dollars in taxes and tariffs, and I had no inflation. We didn’t have any inflation — 1.2% — we had essentially no inflation,” Trump added. (Inflation did not exceed 3% during Trump’s term in office. The pace of price increases fell to near-zero levels early in the COVID-19 pandemic before rebounding to about 1.3% at the end of his term, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data.)
On the campaign trail, Trump has promised a sharp escalation of tariffs enacted during his first term. Trump has proposed tariffs of between 60% and 100% on Chinese goods. Envisioning a wide-reaching tariff policy, Trump has also proposed a tax as high as 20% on all imported products.
The Constitution affords Congress the power to “lay and collect Taxes, Duties” as part of its remit to “provide for the common Defence [sic] and general Welfare of the United States.”
That section of the founding document granted Congress control over tariff policy, Inu Manak, a fellow for trade policy at the Council on Foreign Relations, told ABC News. But, in recent decades, the legislative branch has increasingly handed over such power to the executive.
“For more than 80 years, Congress has delegated extensive tariff-setting authority to the President,” the Congressional Research Service, a nonpartisan group made up of congressional staff, wrote in a February report.
During his first term, Trump invoked laws from that period to enact tariffs. Steel and aluminum tariffs drew upon national security powers afforded by a measure signed into law more than 50 years earlier. Trump’s tariffs on Chinese goods depended upon a law from 45 years beforehand, which President Joe Biden invoked in service of tariffs of his own.
“Congress didn’t really push back,” Manak said.
Trump could use similar authority to move ahead with a plan for tariffs between 60% and 100% on Chinese products, experts said. Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 allows the executive to gain temporary tariff authority in response to an adverse trade policy taken up by another country. Trump could use the measure to justify tariffs on China in a fashion resembling his first term, Lovely said.
“Probably yes,” Lovely added, though she noted that the time limit on the authority could require Trump to apply for a second round of approval from the Office of the United States Trade Representative, a government agency.
Universal tariffs of up to 20% on all imported goods would likely demand legal mechanisms with little or no precedent, experts said. Trump could declare a national emergency and draw upon the Trading with the Enemy Act, which includes emergency authority to impose tariffs. Then-President Richard Nixon used the law to impose a 10% tariff on all goods over a four-month stretch in 1971.
Trump could avail himself of another lever of power: The International Economic Emergency Powers Act. It allows the president to stop all transactions with a foreign adversary that poses a threat, which could include, in theory, a potential tax on imports, experts said. However, a set of universal tariffs would mark an unprecedented use of the 1977 law.
“All our trading partners pose an unusual, extraordinary threat?” Alan Wolf, a former deputy director-general of the World Trade Organization, said earlier this month in a blog post for the Peterson Institute for International Economics. “That would simply be too large a power grab to have been within what Congress intended in this statute.”
Trump could face court challenges that may reach as high as the Supreme Court, some experts said. The threat of such a move could also draw opposition from Congress, which could seek to repeal or amend the law.
“I don’t know if there would be enough pressure from Congress because as we saw last time, they went along with him,” Manak said.
The lack of close precedent makes it challenging to anticipate how Congress or the courts will act, Lovely said. Opposition could also come from foreign nations that impose retaliatory tariffs, straining some industries and prompting additional pressure on elected officials.
“There’s just a whole lot of uncertainty,” Lovely said.
(NEW YORK) — Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of bankrupt crypto exchange FTX, was convicted because of a “false narrative” told by federal prosecutors at a trial “tainted” by errors, his attorneys argued in a new court filing Friday to a federal appeals court.
“Fair trial principles were swept away in a ‘Sentence first-verdict afterwards’ tsunami, as everyone rushed to judgment following FTX’s collapse,” defense attorneys wrote in the appeal. “Sam Bankman-Fried was never presumed innocent. He was presumed guilty—before he was even charged.”
Bankman-Fried was found guilty of fraud, conspiracy and money laundering last November after federal prosecutors in New York accused him of orchestrating a scheme that collapsed the crypto-exchange he founded, FTX, and stole $8 billion in customer funds.
He is serving a 25-year prison sentence, which his attorneys called “draconian.”
In Friday’s appeal, defense attorney Alexandra Shapiro attacked the trial judge, Lewis Kaplan, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, accusing them of lacking objectivity or even-handedness.
“He was presumed guilty by the media. He was presumed guilty by the FTX debtor estate and its lawyers. He was presumed guilty by federal prosecutors eager for quick headlines. And he was presumed guilty by the judge who presided over his trial,” the appeal said.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office declined to comment, but will submit a written reply brief.
The defense asked for a reversal of Bankman-Fried’s conviction and a new trial before a different judge.
Former Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison, Bankman-Fried’s ex-girlfriend and a blockbuster witness for the prosecution, is set to be sentenced for her role in the fraud later this month.
(NEW YORK) — The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations published a memo Wednesday including new details about Boeing safety failings relating to the Alaska Airlines door plug incident in January.
The memo — released ahead of Federal Aviation Administration Administrator Michael Whitaker’s planned testimony before the subcommittee on Wednesday — suggested Boeing had failed to ensure adequate standards in multiple areas.
Boeing personnel, the memo said, “continue to feel pressure to prioritize speed of production over quality.”
The Jan. 5 Alaska Airlines incident saw a door plug on flight 1282 blow out minutes after takeoff from Portland, Oregon, leaving a large hole in the side of the Boeing 737 Max 9 plane. The plane safely made an emergency landing and no one was seriously injured.
The memo noted the results of a May 2024 employee survey that found only 47% of workers answered favorably to the statement, “Schedule pressures do not cause my team to lower our standards.”
Training also remains a problem, the memo said.
“Boeing is failing to ensure many of their employees have the appropriate education, training, skills or experience to effectively perform their assigned tasks,” it read.
The subcommittee said Boeing failed to ensure that nonconforming parts are appropriately documented, stored and dispositioned so that they are not installed on aircraft.
Quality inspection procedures — and FAA review of those procedures — also raised questions as to the qualifications and independence of inspectors, the memo said.
“Boeing personnel are allowed to inspect the quality of their own work,” it read.
“These troubling and recurring safety deficiencies raise questions about the FAA’s ability to oversee the quality and safety of Boeing aircraft through effective and lasting enforcement,” the memo said.
Wednesday’s memo and Whitaker’s testimony are part of a wider inquiry that began on March 19, investigating Boeing’s safety and culture practices following whistleblower allegations.