President Donald Trump has struck a handshake agreement with Boeing for a fixed price contract for the new Air Force One, Fox News reports.
As we noted in the tweets above, the deal is worth $3.9 billion. Officials say it represents $1.4 billion in savings from estimates of over $5 billion for two airplanes and related costs. In late 2016, the White House was under the impression that the program would’ve cost $4 billion – but officials now say the full cost estimate prior to the deal was over $5 billion.
EXCLUSIVE to @FoxNews …New Air Force One’s coming… @realDonaldTrump reached an informal deal with Boeing for 2 new AF-1s. Fixed price deal is for $3.9 billion. WH says this is a savings of $1.4 billion on total original cost estimates of more than $5 billion
— John Roberts (@johnrobertsFox) February 27, 2018
How is the original cost estimate for AF-1 suddenly over $5 billion, when @realDonaldTrump tweeted in 2016 it was $4B? According to an official familiar with the program, POTUS “was given bad information in 2016” about the total cost. It was always over $5B
— John Roberts (@johnrobertsFox) February 27, 2018
“President Trump has reached an informal deal with Boeing on a fixed price contract for the new Air Force One Program. Thanks to the president’s negotiations, the contract will save the taxpayers more than $1.4 billion,” Deputy Press Secretary Hogan Gidley said Tuesday.
The president has been working to negotiate a new Air Force One deal ever since the presidential transition period in late 2016, when he famously complained on Twitter about the cost of the project and threatened to “cancel [the] order.”
Trump later accused Boeing of “doing a little bit of a number. We want Boeing to make a lot of money, but not that much money,” he said.
The planes are meant to replace the aging Reagan-era aircraft currently in use. It was reported last week that Trump was close to a deal with Boeing.
via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/2GP3KOy Tyler Durden