Boeing backers always cite the number of U.S. jobs that would come if the company wins its competition against Northrop Grumman/EADS to build new Air Force tankers. Supporters say a Boeing tanker would mean Made in the U.S.A. and the joint venture would be a bit too foreign. EADS is the European group behind Boeing competitor Airbus.

This is from the Tucson Citizen. (Arizona, of course, is home to key tanker skeptic John McCain.)

Yet, we are on the brink of handing a key part of our defense capability to a government-sponsored French aerospace company that has persistently poked its fingers in the eyes of the U.S. defense policymakers.

The company — Airbus — blithely flouts multilateral international trade laws and stubbornly shrouds their American jobs plan in a suspicious veil of secrecy while arguably offering a subpar product.

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By contrast, Boeing's tanker will be built in America, supporting 44,000 jobs and bringing in $530 million.

Right here in Arizona, Boeing's tanker would support more than 1,100 jobs and bring in an estimated $40 million.

But as the Air Force gets close to a decision, Boeing unions say they want Congress to require the company to build more of the plane in the United States. On the current 767 — which Boeing would modify to create the KC-767 aerial tanker — the fuselage and tail, or empennage, are made overseas.

The new edition of Aero Mechanic, the newspaper of the machinists' union, says in its lead story:

While the Washington Congressional delegation has long been supportive of a Boeing built Air Force tanker, the Coalition of Labor Unions at Boeing (CLUB) is asking our elected officials to do more than that. Union leaders want officials to make the case to return manufacturing of many of the major parts of the tanker to the U.S.

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Congressional delegates were requested to ask the Department of Defense to increase domestic content requirements for the Air Force tanker.

The unions have also made the pitch directly to Boeing management. But CLUB "believes a push from Congressional reps, who will be voting on the tanker decision, could be more effective."

Boeing engineers are another key union in CLUB who are pushing for guarantees of more domestic manufacturing .

It'll be interesting to see how that plays out. Boosting the U.S. workforce was a major piece of Boeing's tanker PR campaign. The unions will now have to walk a careful line between still supporting the Boeing contract while pushing to bring manufacture of those major pieces back to the United States.