The mechanism: For decades, VSMPO-AVISMA — the Russian, Rostec-linked titanium giant — supplied the aerostructures industry's most irreplaceable input. Pre-2022, Boeing sourced as much as 80% of its titanium from VSMPO; Airbus was near 60%. That's not a niche input — titanium's strength-to-weight ratio and heat tolerance make it structurally load-bearing in landing gear, engine components, and airframes, with no cheap substitute. Boeing suspended purchases in March 2022. In September 2023, the Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security added VSMPO-AVISMA to the Entity List as a Russian "military end user," triggering a license-review-policy-of-denial for any U.S.-regulated exports to the firm and hardening what had been a voluntary industry boycott into durable federal policy. That's the catalyst: a sanctions regime, not a demand cycle, permanently reshuffled where Western aerospace buys its titanium sponge and mill products — and the money followed the reshuffle onto U.S. soil.
Who cashes in: