Obama attends Boeing plane sale
Jeremy Hobson: Usually when there’s a signing ceremony and President Obama is there, he’s the one doing the signing. Not today in Indonesia. The President stood watching as executives from airplane maker Boeing signed a deal to sell 230 airplanes to
an Indonesian carrier called Lion Air.
The White House claims the deal will create 110,000 jobs here in the U.S. Marketplace’s Jeff Tyler fact checks that number.
Jeff Tyler: Boeing won’t specify how many people will be hired. But spokesman Doug Alder says Boeing has added 12,000 new jobs this year, and it expects similar increases going forward.
Doug Adler: So as we add jobs here, our suppliers have to keep up with us as we increase production. And that, in turn, causes them to add more jobs. So it’s the ripple effect across the entire U.S. economy.
Spread across suppliers, experts say that figure of 110,000 jobs probably isn’t far off.
Gary Hufbauer: I don’t have a big problem with the arithmetic. But I do have a few academic quibbles.
That’s Gary Hufbauer with the Peterson Institute for International Economics. His quibble is with the timeline.
Hufbauer: These jobs are going to be over a period of years. Probably at least four years.
Boeing says it will be more than a year before it even begins production of its new 737 MAX aircraft, so the deal may result in 110,000 jobs — just not overnight.
I’m Jeff Tyler for Marketplace.
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