We reap what we outsource

Maybe it's because I'm just back from a languid, European-style vacation, but I'm not feeling the rage about our military sending Boeing's fat tanker contract to the French.

So Boeing had its work outsourced. As they might say in France: Quelle ironie. Sen. Patty Murray isn't amused, however. In a speech Tuesday, she portrayed the Air Force decision to buy its air-refueling tankers overseas as practically treasonous.

"Try fighting without us," she thundered, channeling an old general and claiming to speak for thousands of angry Americans. "You can put an American sticker on a plane and call it American, but that doesn't make it American-made. Especially if it was made in France."

Zut alors! Has the senator forgotten that Boeing's planes aren't made in America, either?

For a refresher on how nobody can out-outsource The Boeing Co., she might drop by the Machinists union hall. They have a handy series of charts they call the "Disappearing Airplane." It shows Boeing plane models going back to the 737 Classic, delineating where the parts of each plane were made.

The bottom line: Boeing planes used to be homegrown. Now? On the 787 Dreamliner, nothing's made here except the plane's butt — the tail fin. The rest comes from a few other states and a league of nations. Including those meddling French, whom Boeing hired to make the 787 doors.

Even the 767 — the plane at issue in this tanker contract — is multicultural. The fuselage is built in Japan, the tail in Italy, some other pieces in Great Britain. The parts are then shipped to Everett and put together, much as the French plan to do at a new plant in Alabama.

Murray also said the U.S. government should be propping up Boeing, because we need the jobs. She called the decision a "European economic stimulus package."

It's a fair point, but isn't "free trade" another term for what just happened? It seems to me Boeing getting jilted is a natural result of globalization and all the free-trade pacts we got from Murray and our now-squawking politicians.

A goal of free trade was to allow U.S. businesses to shop the world market for the best deals. Wasn't it only a matter of time before the globe's largest customer — the U.S. government — did the same?

That's what went down last week. It's historic: The Pentagon, once infamous for its $438 hammers and cooked contracts and whatnot, goes international comparison-shopping instead.

I'd guess Boeing knew this might happen some day. Which was probably why it cheated to try to rig the tanker program the last time around.

I also suspect the extreme, even nativist-tinged outrage by our delegation in Congress is because they know we just lost at a game they helped invent.

Let's be honest: We chose this new order. Where the world supposedly is flat and anything can be made anywhere and we're all jostling on one big global playing field.

And where, it turns out, you wake up some days and find you just got your tail fin kicked by the French.

Danny Westneat's column appears Wednesday and Sunday. Reach him at 206-464-2086 or dwestneat@seattletimes.com.