The Trump administration is considering a proposal to halt deliveries of jet engines co-produced by General Electric Co. for a new airliner being developed in China, a potential escalation of protective trade measures that could have steep repercussions for the major American manufacturer.
The administration may decline to issue a license allowing CFM International, a joint venture of GE and France’s Safran SA, to export more of its LEAP 1C jet engines to China, a person familiar with the discussions said. The engines are being used in the development of that country’s Comac C919 jetliner, the latest in a planned family of new jets that is years behind schedule.
Some within the administration are concerned that the Chinese could reverse-engineer the CFM engines, allowing China to break into the global jet-engine market, undermining U.S. business interests.
The White House on Thursday asked U.S. scientists and medical researchers to investigate the scientific origins of the novel coronavirus, as misinformation about the outbreak spreads online.
The director of the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), in a letter to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, requested that scientific experts “rapidly” look into the origins of the virus in order to address both the current spread and “to inform future outbreak preparation and better understand animal/human and environmental transmission aspects of coronaviruses.”