We all got to talking about this over beers last night. My friends all swore that no more than 25% of the pieces of Boeing’s jets are manufactured outside the U.S., while I say it’s def. 40%, and prob. more like 60%. Can anybody help out on this? What about links and/or graphics that would help explain it? Note there is a diff. between being MADE elsewhere and being ASSEMBLED here.
WAG here, but my vote is assembled in the US using parts and partial assemblies from The Federation of Godknowswhere. A lot of the plane’s components are already pre-fabricated, so it’s just a matter of putting all of the pieces together.
So you are both right. 
A 747 has something like 6 million parts from rivets, screws and wire connectors to complex cast and machined items. Obviously it makes a big difference if you go by number of parts or dollar value of the parts.
Generally the industry is concentrated even within the US, for instance, 75% of Boeings domestic procurement comes from just 4 states. According to my quick research US content averages at 85% accross boeing models with 60-70% of subcontracts also being domestic. Japan builds most of the fuselage components of the 767 and 777 but by dollar value foreign content remains only about 17%. I understand tht with respect to airframe component Boeing is careful to maintain domestic capacity to replace the suppliers.
Here is a link to Boeing’s procurement policy.
http://www.boeing.com/companyoffices/doingbiz/terms/sbsdb/procurem.htm
As Seth pointed out and the policy suggests, they have inumerable suppliers. They even use one man machine shops that provide particularly complex parts in specific alloys. The importance of geographic considerations for “just in time” inventory and the need to ensure standards would favor local suppliers wherever possible. Japan seems to provide the bulk of foreign content, at least by dollar value, but this seems to be more motivated by strategic partnership.
This only takes us one level up the supply chain beyond that its anyones guess how much foreign content gets in and that still depends on how you define it. For instance they purchase large quantities of milled titanium products from a russian company but the parts themselves are still fabricated in the united states. Whether and to what extent domestic suppliers also use foreign parts is anyones guess.
I work at Boeing but NOT in the commercial airplanes division, so I don’t know any more than the layman but…
I do know that Boeing considers their wing technology to be the crucial edge over their competition and they are quite jealous of that technology. So, in general, wings aren’t outsourced.
Having said that, the other posters are correct. Boeing gets parts from all over the world. Frequently that’s part of a deal – Country X will buy airplanes from Boeing if Boeing will manufacture in their country. Obviously Country X has to have a big market in order for this to be worthwhile to Boeing, but Japan and China both have a deal like this, IIRC.