How Kansas became collateral damage in Trump’s Canadian trade war

WICHITA, Kansas — When President Donald Trump slammed Bombardier and urged a boycott of the Canadian company’s planes, it threw the 1,500 people working at its American headquarters into uproar. “It was all anyone could think about for days,” said one employee in the parking lot outside its Wichita hangars. “There isn’t a person in this city who isn’t connected to aviation in some way.

How could he diss something so important?” Iowa Democrat touts support from ‘Republican’ voter in new ad. He’s a registered Democrat The State Department’s replacement of flags should only be the start Sky stabbings and Capitol plots: The violent reality behind ‘peace abroad’ And in Kansas, where the race for Senate is running so close, it threw local Republican officials for a loop.

If you wanted to deliberately make it impossible for Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS) to win reelection, this is how you would do it, is how one senior Republican put it. “Bombardier, importing beef … those two things in particular are just about the worst things you can do for a state where agriculture and aviation are huge industries,” they told Secrets.

Kansas should be a gimme for Republicans. It has not returned a Democrat to the Senate in almost a century and Trump won it by 16 points just two years ago. Yet the latest polling shows a tight race. Adam Hamilton has leveraged his position as the head of a megachurch to offer Democrats their best chance yet of nicking a Senate seat.

Republicans elsewhere have asked Trump to stay away from their races for fear his poor approval ratings might drag them down. In Kansas, they have had to endure a series of policy decisions that have gone even further in potentially harming their chances, they say.

In August, ranchers in a state that has more cattle than people were infuriated when Trump lifted tariffs on ground beef from Argentina and Brazil. A sign marks an entrance to the U.S. headquarters for aircraft maker Bombardier Inc., Friday, Jan. 31, 2025, in Wichita, Kan. (AP Photo/John Hanna) A month later, as part of his trade war with Canada, Trump slammed one of Wichita’s most important employers. “NO MORE SELLING BOMBARDIER IN THE UNITED STATES!

Their products aren’t good enough,” he posted on his Truth Social site. Wichita, it seemed, could become collateral damage in Trump’s feud with Canada. READ MORE: KANSAS RANCHERS ARE FURIOUS WITH TRUMP “Taken together, Bombardier and beef, those two things are just hard to explain,” said the official.

The Kansas delegation in Washington moved fast. Marshall’s Senate colleague Jerry Moran released a statement that day, saying he had taken his concerns directly to the White House. “I’m going to fight to keep Bombardier’s over 1,200 Kansas jobs.

I’ve already taken that concern inside the Oval Office,” said Marshall. Jim Howell , a Republican commissioner of Sedgwick County , which includes Wichita, said it seemed the president did not understand how Bombardier related to America or to this corner of Kansas in particular. “We kind of took it personally,” he said.

When it came to the Senate race, he added, Marshall had passed the test with his response … but only up to a point. “If he does have a line to the president’s office, that does mean something,” said Howell. “How many people can say that?” “I just don’t know that he was as aggressive as I would have liked, perhaps because a lot of folks spoke up before he seemed to to speak to the issue,” he added.

The issue is deeply personal to the population of Wichita. It styles itself as the Air Capital of the World , leaning into its history as a hub for aviation companies including Cessna, Beechcraft, and Learjet.

Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., right, interacts with an attendee during an event with Vice President JD Vance at Milbank Manufacturing, Monday, May 18, 2026, in Kansas City, Mo. (Eric Lee/Pool Photo via AP) Bombardier arrived in the city when it bought Learjet in 1990.

Today, its facility services, tests, and modifies aircraft, including military planes. The Montreal-headquartered company employs another 2,000 people elsewhere in the United States. Democrats can’t believe their luck at Trump’s intervention.

While it can be hard to weaponize the president’s trade wars, suddenly they were offered a golden opportunity to put an unpopular president at the center of the Kansas contest. “It just served to show this whole fight we got into with Canada is so useless, unneeded, and harmful to our country and to our local economy, because 1,500 people depend on Bombardier,” said Dan Stockemer.

In the 1980s he was GOP chairman for Sedgwick County, but dropped his affiliation four years ago. He plans to vote for Hamilton in the November election. “I think local people were disappointed with those comments and it makes like very difficult for Republicans in this state,” he said.

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