The latest trade threats from US President Donald Trump, particularly regarding the future of the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA), are not causing undue concern for Bombardier CEO Éric Martel.
"We assess the risk of our aircraft being tariffed as extremely low," he said in an interview with Gérald Fillion on Zone économie.
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Tru...
Questions asked in this interview
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0:03When we say that your turnaround plan is complete, what does that mean?
2:45President Trump threatens to withdraw certification of Canadian business jets and he invoked 50-year tariffs on Canadian aircraft. Is this threat still looming?
3:41Are you taking this threat seriously given the impetuous nature of the president?
4:45It is reasonable what you say, but is the threat serious?
With us: Éric Martel, CEO of Bombardier. Good evening, thank you for being with us. When we say that your turnaround plan is complete, what does that mean?
We had very concrete objectives following the transformation when we sold our transportation division and other assets. We set very concrete objectives in January 2021. They were over a five-year period until the end of 2025, and we were happy to celebrate with our employees that we have surpassed all our objectives and significantly exceeded some of them, and we have also revised upwards what we have achieved. Debt reduction objectives: improving our cash flows, profitability, we have made close to 1.5, more than 1.6 billion recently, and the employees are happy, and we are looking ahead and have the possibility to grow, we have liquidity and we will see how we allocate our capital in investments.
Despite what we might think and the setbacks, what we read, we continue to move forward. Until now, a year ago, there was a lot of concern regarding the US market. It continued last year to represent a strong percentage of deliveries. Bombardier is extremely well diversified. We have a lot of success in Europe and the Middle East, and Asia is everywhere on the planet, so we have pushed a lot in this direction not for a year only but for several years.
Yes, but we also have diversification at the level of our internal portfolios. We have more than doubled the services division which was about 1 billion dollars in revenue. The defense division that we started talking about and promoting was about 200 million in revenue, and we have reached 1 billion. It is important, also on the distribution of revenue inside how we generate the revenue.
And an increase of 22% in the order book despite geopolitical and commercial uncertainties. President Trump threatens to withdraw certification of Canadian business jets and he invoked 50-year tariffs on Canadian aircraft. Is this threat still looming?
You have to understand. It was an issue between our competitor in the United States and Transport Canada on the delays in certifying the aircraft. What I understand, and I am not involved in the details, but I understand that it is being resolved. The planes should be certified very soon in Canada. There are very few aircraft sold. There are one or two, and these aircraft will be able to be certified and delivered subsequently to Canada. But for now, nothing has changed. The threat was there, and we have worked with the FAA.
You have to understand how aeronautics is structured. We are extremely proud to have our head office in Canada and to have our assembly plants. We have 2800 suppliers in the United States and aeronautics is a very international business, so even my American colleagues who run companies in aeronautics, no one is interested in having tariffs, so there is enormous pressure on the American side, and the Americans, it is the sector where net exports are about 75 billion. It is a very large exporter of aircraft or aeronautical components, so for them to touch on that, they would probably have more problems on their side.
Martel, É. (2026, February 12). Donald Trump's trade threats: interview with the CEO of Bombardier | Business Zone [Interview transcript]. Radio-Canada Info. CEOInterviews.AI. https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1034869/
MLA
Éric Martel. "Donald Trump's trade threats: interview with the CEO of Bombardier | Business Zone." Radio-Canada Info, 12 Feb. 2026. Transcript, CEOInterviews.AI, https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1034869/.
BibTeX
@misc{martel2026_1034869,
author = {Éric Martel},
title = {Donald Trump's trade threats: interview with the CEO of Bombardier | Business Zone},
howpublished = {Interview transcript, Radio-Canada Info. CEOInterviews.AI},
year = {2026},
month = {feb},
url = {https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1034869/},
note = {Speaker-attributed transcript with timestamps}
}
