Reporter: Boeing has own foreign policy

Boeing Co.'s decision to build a 787 Dreamliner assembly plant in North Charleston and create thousands of local jobs gives South Carolina residents a reason to peer into the complex world of foreign policy.

Take it from New York Times reporter David Sanger, who has focused on international issues from his Washington, D.C.-based vantage point for 25 years.

"Boeing has a foreign policy," he said, pointing to Boeing's long-standing dispute with its French rival, Airbus, over government incentives, and the growing importance of the U.S. trade relationship with China.

The aerospace giant's global footprint grew several years ago as company executives mapped out an ambitious supply chain for the Dreamliner jet, parts of which are being manufactured on every continent except Antarctica.

The complicated manufacturing system later caused massive supply problems and delayed the plane's first scheduled flight by three years.

"It's likely to change the way people here are attuned to American foreign policy, particularly trade policy," Sanger said of Boeing's plans.

Sanger spoke Thursday at the Charleston Regional Development Alliance's annual luncheon in North Charleston while promoting his newly released book, "The Inheritance: The World Obama Confronts and the Challenges to American Power."

In it, Sanger argues that the administration of former President George W. Bush focused so narrowly on Iraq that it let other foreign policy problems, such as the Taliban's growing strength in Afghanistan and North Korea's nuclear weapons advancement, boil over, leaving a complicated mess for the current administration.

"All of these issues needed far more attention, and that is the nature of" the book," he said, adding that President Barack Obama will be judged more critically on his foreign policy decisions in future months.

Dealing with an earlier administration's problems isn't the same strain of difficulty that struggling Charleston small business owners face in the sour economy, he said. He said the private and public sectors share few characteristics, especially when it comes to reform and spending money.

"What you'll quickly discover is almost nothing transfers," he said.

Bush, the country's first president to hold a master's degree in business administration, tried to incorporate the experience he gained working in the oil industry without much success, Sanger said.

And the Obama administration's effort to trim weapons programs deemed wasteful from the Defense Department budget seemed similar to a private company's cost-cutting measures, though many of those programs were salvaged by congressional leaders who wanted to keep defense jobs in their districts, he said.

"Usually every time that I hear a CEO say they want to run government like they run a business, I cringe," Sanger said.

Reach Katy Stech at 937-5549 or kstech@postandcourier.com.