Where Does Trump Fly From Here?

Watch and wait... Trump has threatened to tighten the screws of all businesses nonAmerican but will he? Will the shrewd businessman that he is stop him from overturning trade alliances and turning off the supply chain that American aviation giants depend on? A close look

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In the 14 months preceeding the November 8 election, “Donald Trump’s commentary on aviation”, to use the phrase of one writer was simply focussed on airports. He railed against the “terrible state” of airports in the US, described many of them as trashy and said New York’s LaGuardia was “third world” as compared with Doha’s Hamad and Dubai’s Al Makhtoum! It only reflected how far from reality Donald was!

As long as Trump was railing against the airports no one was really bothered, rather there was much welcome of his promise to spend over one trillion dollars on infrastructure development that included airports.Of course, he is pretty much off the mark even when it comes to US airports, but his bluster and rhetoric would cause not much harm.

“Where the prospect of Trump goes from misguided about airports to truly catastrophic for US aviation is when you consider his trade policies. Trump’s threats to the global economic system, and specifically against America’s trade deals pose an existential threat to both the airline and aerospace industries in this country”, noted aviation commentator Vinaya Bhaskara and added: “Donald Trump could cost the US airline industry $5 billion in revenue, his trade policies pose that kind of danger’’. Not just that, he could literally contract the global aviation industry like nothing else.

He has been promising to revoke NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) or rework it considerablly. That would have a huge impact on the airline industry. According to the Center for Asia Pacific Aviation (CAPA): “Air services usually form no part of wider trade deliberations, if the confrontation stakes were to be raised both sides would use all negotiating tools available to them.”