The rapid decline of Boeing, until recently the world’s dominant firm in both commercial and military aviation has attracted relatively little attention until it recently attracted the added element of scandal. Writing in Slate, Douglas Gantenbein gives an analysis focusing on top-level mismanagement.

This story fits into, all sorts of economic narratives, but not always neatly. For instance, the ease with which Airbus has captured most of the commercial aviation market from Boeing runs against standard claims about the resurgent US and sclerotic Europe. Airbus looks like a success for industry policy, but then it turns out that Boeing is just as deeply enmeshed in the government trough.

Anyway, what struck me was this observation from Gantenbein

the Boeing 747 stands with Coca-Cola and the Golden Arches as the best-known American products around the globe …. the sheer visibility of Boeing’s products has a kind of halo effect, enhancing America’s status in a way that hamburgers and soft drinks do not. The sight of a European or Asian airport packed with 747s and 777s says one thing about the United States. Those same airports crammed with Airbus A340s—and, before long, with mammoth A380 superjumbo jets—say another.

This meshes quite neatly with a point raised in my discussion of soft power, namely that the success of American cultural exports, like movies and McDonalds

partly comes at the expense of other exporters. In talking about American ‘soft power’, it’s not often noted that, with some important exceptions such as computers, it’s rare nowadays to encounter American manufactured products outside the US.

Gantenbein quotes some economists who assert that

“the single most important sector in the U.S. economy in terms of skilled production jobs, value-added [to products] and exports

. You don’t have to accept this in full to recognise the limitations of claims that the ubiquity of McDonalds and Hollywood movies are a guarantee of global hegemony.