Umm, no. A 17,000% increase in price for a TRASH CAN is not justified under any circumstance. That is straight up robbery that Boeing knows they can get away with.
I'm guessing that what's happening here is that Boeing could be making more money doing something other than building trash cans, and so is sending an absurdly exorbitant quote to their customer to communicate "stop buying this".
Boeing shouldn't be exploiting the system and the government shouldn't be buying at those prices.
But alas, here we are with an inflated military budget that has leeches and mismanagement at every corner. Just to make number go up in bank account...
I believe that Boeing is doing what any rational economic actor would do in this situation. To the extent that there is a problem here, I see it as a regulatory problem.
