WASHINGTON: The US Commerce Department has notched up proposed trade duties on Bombardier CSeries jets to nearly 300 percent, affirming Boeing’s complaint that the Canadian company received illegal subsidies and dumped the planes at “absurdly low” prices.
The decision underscored the defensive trade policy of US President Donald Trump, and could effectively halt sales of Bombardier’s innovative new plane to US airlines by quadrupling the cost of the jets imported to the US.
The Commerce Department proposed a 79.82 percent antidumping duty on Friday, on top of a 219.63 percent duty for subsidies announced last week.
The new duty follows a preliminary finding that Bombardier sold 75 CSeries jets below cost to Delta Air Lines in 2016. The total was well above the 80 percent Boeing sought in its complaint.
The proposed duties would not take effect unless affirmed by the US International Trade Commission (ITC) early next year.
The duties are expected to heighten trade tensions between the US, Canada and Britain, where CSeries wings are made. The US, Canada and Mexico also are negotiating to modernize the North American Free Trade Agreement.
After the first duty was announced on Sept. 26, Canada and Britain threatened to avoid buying Boeing military equipment, saying duties on the CSeries would reduce US sales and put thousands of Bombardier jobs in their countries at risk.
“This is a disappointing statement but hardly surprising given last week’s preliminary ruling sided with Boeing,” a British government spokesman said on Saturday.
“We continue to make all efforts alongside the Canadian government to get Boeing to the table to resolve the case.”
Boeing, the world’s largest plane maker, hailed the decision and hinted at an alternative for Bombardier.
“These duties are the consequence of a conscious decision by Bombardier to violate trade law and dump their CSeries aircraft to secure a sale,” Chicago-based Boeing said in a statement.
“Bombardier always has the option of coming into full compliance with trade laws,” Boeing added.
Canada’s foreign ministry said Boeing was “manipulating the US trade remedy system” to keep the CSeries out of the country.
Canada is in “complete disagreement” with the decision and would keep raising concerns with the US and Boeing, Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland said in a statement.
To win its case before the ITC, Boeing must prove it was harmed by Bombardier’s sales, despite not using one of its own jets to compete for the Delta order.
Bombardier said it was confident that the ITC would find Boeing was not harmed, calling the Commerce Department decision a case of “egregious overreach.”
Delta said the decision was preliminary and it was confident the ITC “will conclude that no US manufacturer is at risk” from Bombardier’s plane.
Boeing has said the dispute was about “maintaining a level playing field” and was not an attack on Canada or Britain.
US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said the decision affirmed Trump’s “America First” policy.
“We will do everything in our power to stand up for American companies and their workers,” Ross said in a statement.
But the industry is not so simple. More than half of the purchased content of each CSeries aircraft comes from US suppliers, Bombardier has said.
The plane supports an estimated 22,700 jobs and Bombardier’s aerospace division spent $2.14 billion in the US last year, according to the company and documents seen by Reuters.
Boeing has said the CSeries would not exist without hundreds of millions of dollars in launch aid from the governments of Canada and Britain and a $2.5 billion equity infusion from the province of Quebec and its largest pension fund in 2015.
Bombardier hit by 300% hike in duties after Boeing complaint
Bombardier hit by 300% hike in duties after Boeing complaint
Saudi-built AI takes on financial crime
- Mozn’s FOCAL reflects the Kingdom’s growing fintech ambitions
RIYADH: As financial institutions face increasingly complex threats from fraud and money laundering, technology companies are racing to build systems that can keep pace with evolving risks.
One such effort is FOCAL, an AI-powered compliance and fraud prevention platform developed by Riyadh-based enterprise artificial intelligence company Mozn.
Founded in 2017, Mozn was established with a focus on building AI technology tailored to regional market needs and regulatory environments. Over time, the company has expanded its reach beyond Saudi Arabia, developing advanced AI solutions used by financial institutions in multiple markets. It has also gained international recognition, including being listed among the World’s Top 250 Fintech Companies for the second consecutive year.
In January 2026, Mozn’s flagship product, FOCAL, was named a Category Leader in Chartis Research’s RiskTech Quadrant 2025 for both AML Transaction Monitoring and KYC (Know Your Customer) Data and Solutions, placing it among 10 companies globally to receive this designation.
Malik Alyousef, co-founder of Mozn and chief technology officer of FOCAL, told Arab News that the platform initially focused on core anti-money laundering functions when development began in 2018. These included customer screening, watchlists, and transaction monitoring to support counter-terrorism financing efforts and the detection of suspicious activity.
As financial crime tactics evolved, the platform expanded into fraud prevention. According to Alyousef, this shift introduced a more proactive model, beginning with device risk analysis and later incorporating tools such as device fingerprinting, behavioral biometrics, and transaction fraud detection.
More recently, FOCAL has moved toward platform convergence through its Financial Crime Intelligence layer, a vendor-neutral framework designed to bring together multiple systems into a single interface for investigation and reporting. The approach allows institutions to gain a consolidated view without replacing their existing technology infrastructure.
“Our architecture eliminates blind spots in financial crime detection. It gives institutions a complete view of the user journey, combining transactional and non-transactional behavioral data,” Alyousef said.
DID YOU KNOW?
• Some electronic money institutions using the platform have reported fraud reductions of up to 90 percent.
• The platform combines anti-money laundering and fraud prevention into a single financial crime intelligence system.
• FOCAL integrates with existing banking systems without requiring institutions to replace their technology stack.
Beyond its underlying architecture, Alyousef pointed to several areas where FOCAL aims to differentiate itself in a competitive market. One is its emphasis on proactive fraud prevention, which assesses risk throughout the customer lifecycle — from onboarding and login behavior to ongoing account activity — with the goal of stopping fraud before losses occur.
He described the platform as an “expert-led model,” highlighting the availability of on-the-ground support for system design, tuning, assessments, and continuous optimization throughout its use.
“FOCAL is designed to be extended,” Alyousef added, noting its adaptability and the ability for clients to customize schemas, rules, and data fields to match their business models and risk tolerance. This flexibility, he said, allows institutions to respond more quickly to emerging fraud patterns.
Alyousef also emphasized the importance of local context in the platform’s development.
“The platform incorporates regional regulatory requirements and language considerations. Global tools often struggle with local context, naming conventions and compliance nuances — we are designed specifically with these realities in mind,” he said.
FOCAL is currently used by a range of organizations, including traditional banks, digital banks, fintech firms, electronic money institutions, payment companies, and other financial service providers. Alyousef said results from live deployments have been significant, with some large EMI clients reporting fraud reductions of up to 90 percent.
“Clients benefit not only from reduced fraud losses but also from an improved customer experience, as the system minimizes unnecessary friction and false rejections,” he said. “Beyond financial services, we also work with organizations in e-commerce and telecommunications.”
Looking ahead, Alyousef said the company sees agentic AI as a key direction for the future of financial crime prevention, both in the region and globally. Mozn, he added, is investing heavily in this area to enhance investigative workflows and operational efficiency, building on the capabilities of its Financial Crime Intelligence layer.
“We are pioneers in introducing agentic AI for financial crime investigation and rule-building. Our roadmap increasingly emphasizes automation, advanced machine learning and AI-assisted workflows to improve investigator productivity and reduce false positives.”
As AI tools become more widely available, Alyousef warned that the risk of misuse by criminals is also increasing, raising the bar for defensive technologies.
“Our goal is to stay ahead of that curve and to contribute meaningfully to positioning Saudi Arabia and the region as globally competitive leaders in AI,” he said.
