US suspends engine sales to Chinese planemaker COMAC, New York Times reports

WASHINGTON: The United States has suspended some sales to China of critical U.S. technologies, including those related to jet engines to Chinese state-owned aerospace manufacturer COMAC, the New York Times reported on Wednesday.

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US halts some tech exports to China's COMAC, affecting parts used in its C919 aircraft, amid national security reviews.
The move follows China's export curbs on critical minerals, escalating trade tensions between the two nations.
COMAC's C919 depends on foreign components, especially US-made engines, making its aircraft program vulnerable to export restrictions.

COMAC is developing its own commercial planes to compete with dominant planemakers Airbus and Boeing, but China does not yet have suitable homegrown engines and remains reliant on imports.

Citing two people familiar with the matter, the New York Times said the move was in response to China's recent restriction on exports of critical minerals to the U.S.

The newspaper said the department had suspended some licenses that allowed U.S. firms to sell products and technology to COMAC to develop its C919 aircraft, according to one person familiar with the matter.

The U.S. Commerce Department told Reuters in a statement that it was reviewing exports of strategic significance to China. "In some cases, Commerce has suspended existing export licenses or imposed additional license requirements while the review is pending," it said.

Aviation equipment is among the sectors affected, three people familiar with the matter told Reuters.

COMAC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

A spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington told Reuters: "China firmly opposes the US's overstretching the concept of national security, abusing export controls, and maliciously blocking and suppressing China."

COMAC's single-aisle C919 plane is made in China but many of its components come from overseas, including its LEAP-1C engine made by a joint venture between GE Aerospace GE.N and France's Safran Aerospace did not offer an immediate comment.

The C919 - designed to compete with best-selling narrow-body models from Airbus and Boeing - entered service in China in 2023 after winning domestic safety certification in 2022.

Eighteen C919s are currently in operation, according to aviation intelligence provider ch-aviation, and they fly only within mainland China and Hong Kong.

GE was first granted a license to sell the C919's LEAP engines to COMAC in 2014. Early in 2020, the United States weighed whether to deny GE's latest license request for the engine, but President Donald Trump's first administration granted it.

"I want China to buy our jet engines, the best in the World," Trump said in February that year. "I want to make it EASY to do business with the United States, not difficult."