What you need to know about Bombardier and how it become a trade war flashpoint

A Bombardier Global 8000 jet after an entry-into-service celebration event at the Bombardier Aircraft Assembly Centre in Mississauga on Dec. 8, 2025. Photo by Laura Proctor/Bloomberg

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This week, U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to issue a ban on the sale of aircraft made by Bombardier Inc. unless it moves manufacturing to the United States. “If they want our Market, they must build here, and stop treating America like a ‘piggybank,’” Trump said in a Truth Social post on Monday, the day before retaliatory tariffs from Canada went into effect. But Bombardier, a snowmobile-maker-turned-business-jet-giant with headquarters in Montreal, has deep ties in both its supply chain and customer base south of the border. Here, Financial Post explains how Bombardier grew then drastically pruned back its business over decades, what it does today and why Trump is targeting it in his escalation of the U.S.-Canada trade war.

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What are the origins of Bombardier?

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Long before it built its reputation as a business jet behemoth and one of Canada’s biggest global companies, Bombardier got its start selling a new form of winter vehicle invented by its founder.

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Joseph-Armand Bombardier, a native of Valcourt, Que., built the first snowmobile in 1935 and brought his product to market in 1937.

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In 1942, he founded L’Auto-Neige Bombardier Limitée and, in 1959, launched the smaller, sleeker Ski-Doo — which would have been named the Ski-Dog, but for a typo.

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Two years after Bombardier’s death in 1964, Laurent Beaudoin, his son-in-law, took over as chief executive, renaming the company Bombardier Ltd. in 1967 as its focus expanded beyond snow transport.

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Beaudoin, a chartered accountant by training, took Bombardier public on the Montreal and Toronto Stock Exchanges in 1969 and it was under his leadership that the snowmobile maker transformed into a sprawling conglomerate that encompassed rail transportation, watercraft and corporate aviation.

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In 1978, two years after it purchased a majority share in railway equipment manufacturer Montreal Locomotive Works, the company name was tweaked again to Bombardier Inc. And in 1986 the company bought Canadair, which developed the Challenger business jets, from the Canadian government — its first move into the airline industry.

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What does it do now and how did it get there?

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The Bombardier of today mainly produces executive jets for corporations and wealthy individuals, after drastically paring back other parts of the business over the years.

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Even its snowmobiles are no longer produced by Bombardier. The company put its recreational products division up for sale in 2003, and it was bought by the Bombardier family, Bain Capital and the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, who formed a new company called BRP Inc.

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In the 2000s, Bombardier explored the possibility of creating commercial aircraft and eventually launched its ambitious C-Series program in 2008. However, the program was bogged down by technical delays and cost overruns for years.

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“The company nearly went bankrupt,” said John Gradek, an aviation expert at McGill University, noting that financial pressures forced Bombardier to eventually clean up its portfolio and refocus its efforts into one line of business.

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The final straw came when Bombardier garnered interest from a U.S. buyer for its commercial fleet, only for American rival The Boeing Company to file a complaint alleging dumping that resulted in a U.S. threat of 220 per cent duties in 2017. Gradek said this forced Bombardier to pivot and make a deal with Europe’s Airbus SAS, which became a majority shareholder of the C-Series in 2018 when it purchased the program for a token $1.