by Mike Dorning
WILKES-BARRE, Pa.–As Europe’s Airbus and its American partner Northrop-Grumman launch a lobbying and public relations offensive this week in favor of the muti-billion-dollar deal they secured to replace a fleet of U.S. Air Force tankers, count Barack Obama a skeptic.
“I would think that we would want to prioritize US companies that are employing U.S. workers,” Obama responded when asked about the deal at a town meeting in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., this afternoon.
“I don’t mind the Pentagon procuring from other countries. But when we you’ve got such an enormous contract for such a vital piece of our U.S. military arsenal, it strikes me that we should have identified a US company that could do it,” he continued.
The movement of industrial jobs overseas is deeply unpopular in Pennsylvania, a Rust Belt state that has had much of its manufacturing base eroded in recent decades. The Democratic presidential candidates face over here on April 22 for the next primary in the contest for the party’s nomination.The Airbus tanker deal is reported to be worth at least $35 billion, though Congress must appropropriate the money to fund it.
Obama acknowledged a personal “bias” in favor of the losing bidder, Boeing, because it is headquartered in Illinois, which he represents in the Senate.
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But Obama said he and the rest of Congress would be closely scrutinizing the deal.
“One of the questions we’re going to have is: ‘Was Boeing competitive?”–because I do want to make sure that their bid was at least comparable to Airbus,” Obama said. “If Airbus was saving the Pentagon 50 percent or 25 percent or even 15 percent or 10 percent, then maybe they could make a credible argument for it. And we’re going to be taking a closer look at this.”