Pentagon adds Duluth's Cirrus Aircraft to Chinese military list
The Pentagon put Duluth-based Cirrus Aircraft on its 188-company Chinese military list, setting up a June 30 defense-contract ban.
The Pentagon has added Duluth-based Cirrus Aircraft to its updated list of Chinese military companies, putting one of northeastern Minnesota’s best-known manufacturers in the middle of a federal national-security fight. The designation could affect Cirrus’s ability to win U.S. defense work beginning June 30, even as the company remains a major employer and a visible part of Duluth’s aviation identity.
The Defense Department’s June 8 update expanded the Section 1260H list to 188 entities under a provision of the Fiscal Year 2021 National Defense Authorization Act. Companies on the list face a direct contracting prohibition starting June 30, with indirect procurement restrictions reported to take effect later, in June 2027. The Pentagon says the list is meant to identify companies it considers tied to China’s military-civil fusion strategy.
Cirrus appears on the list under Aviation Industry Corporation of China Ltd., or AVIC, which the Pentagon describes as a Chinese state-owned aerospace and defense conglomerate. The company was acquired in 2011 by China Aviation Industry General Aircraft Co. Ltd., a deal earlier reported at about $210 million. That ownership history is central to the Pentagon’s action, which appears to reflect control and affiliation rather than any publicly described misconduct by Cirrus itself.
For Duluth and St. Louis County, the listing raises immediate questions about what comes next for jobs, suppliers and future business. Cirrus says on its careers page that it builds the SR Series aircraft and the Vision Jet in factories in Duluth and Grand Forks, North Dakota. Recent reporting has put the company at about 1,792 employees and roughly $359.2 million in revenue, though those figures come from third-party company profile data.
Cirrus, founded by Alan and Dale Klapmeier in Wisconsin and later headquartered in Duluth, has long been identified with the region’s aviation brand. The Pentagon action now places that local identity against a broader federal accountability debate: how the United States should treat companies with Chinese ownership links when defense rules, procurement policy and local economic interests collide.
The Chinese Embassy criticized the U.S. list as an overstretched concept of national security and discriminatory. House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party Chairman John Moolenaar responded by urging American companies and governments to cut ties with newly listed firms, underscoring how the decision is likely to reverberate far beyond Duluth.
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