And now let’s hear from the Senator for Boeing…
Earlier this week, the World Trade Organization issued a sealed decision on the long-running dispute between Airbus and Boeing over which of them receives impermissible government subsidies and how much they’ve received. The fact that the decision has not been released publicly means that the sparring over its content has a surreal quality. The dispute ...
Earlier this week, the World Trade Organization issued a sealed decision on the long-running dispute between Airbus and Boeing over which of them receives impermissible government subsidies and how much they've received. The fact that the decision has not been released publicly means that the sparring over its content has a surreal quality.
Earlier this week, the World Trade Organization issued a sealed decision on the long-running dispute between Airbus and Boeing over which of them receives impermissible government subsidies and how much they’ve received. The fact that the decision has not been released publicly means that the sparring over its content has a surreal quality.
The dispute has also acquired an unusual political flavor. In the past, Boeing-Airbus disputes were good, old-fashioned America versus Europe affairs, which at least had the virtue of clarity. Now, both companies operate facilities around the world and engage in all sorts of complex partnering arrangements. Airbus’s parent company, for example, is competing with Boeing to build a huge tanker plane for the U.S. Air Force. Quite shrewdly, it has determined that those planes will be assembled at a plant in Alabama. And that in turn means the WTO ruling has pitted U.S. senator against U.S. senator. Here’s the statement from Alabama’s Richard Shelby:
The WTO’s ruling unquestionably states that Boeing received significant government subsides prohibited by the WTO. Today’s decision should end Boeing supporters’ attempt to derail the tanker competition by arguing that the trade dispute is one-sided. In fact, the ruling shows that Boeing received at least $5 billion in illegal aid and has never repaid these funds to the US taxpayer. As I have said many times before, we must not allow the WTO rulings or political motivation delay the tanker award. Moving forward, the competition to replace our aging tanker fleet should continue, unimpeded.
And here’s the reaction from Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas:
The final ruling by the WTO merely confirms the interim report findings, which found in Boeing’s favor on the majority of the challenges. Attempts to skew this ruling in the European Union’s (EU) favor is a exercise in distraction. Once this ruling is made public in the near future, the sunshine will refute much of the claims in support of the EU position and truly indicate where the market distorting benefits flowed.
Sigh. Has it come to this, gentlemen? Where are we as Americans if we cannot at least join forces against Airbus, the European Union, and its socialistic system of subsidies?
David Bosco is a professor at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies. He is the author of The Poseidon Project: The Struggle to Govern the World’s Oceans. Twitter: @multilateralist
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