The View | Why Boeing’s influence over Washington might be as insidious as Beijing’s control over Huawei

As China grapples with unrest in Hong Kong and a coronavirus outbreak, its control and command economy means that the bosses get blamed for everything that goes wrong. Perhaps it’s far better to have a capitalist economy, in which the market makes the decisions.

Or is it? It is true that the state captures companies in China. The Chinese government has gone to bat for privately owned Huawei in an extraordinarily aggressive way over the luxury mansion arrest in Vancouver of its chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, who is accused of falsifying declarations to her bank.

In the US, however, it is big companies that capture government. US President Donald Trump is displaying righteous anger at European proposals to minimally tax global technology companies. Such state support for private companies in both China and the US seems odd when you consider that their actions will ultimately make wealthy directors even more wealthy.

Trump also had a word for Boeing, one of America’s most iconic businesses, describing it as “very disappointing”. The aircraft maker’s stock took a severe hit when it became known that accidents in October 2018 and March 2019 involving two of the company’s newest aircraft model, the 737 MAX 8, had resulted from an avoidable design defect.