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Boeing believes WTO will make Airbus repay aid
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Boeing believes WTO will make Airbus repay aid
Boeing is confident it will win its battle with Airbus over alleged illegal state aid and that the World Trade Organization (WTO) will make its aviation rival pay back at least some of it, company officials said yesterday.
The case, together with a complaint brought by Airbus against Boeing, is before the Geneva-based trade referee in what is billed as the biggest trade dogfight ever. At stake are billions of dollars each accuses the other of receiving in illegal subsidies, with Boeing arguing it was partly thanks to state handouts in the form of “launch aid” that Airbus overtook it as the world’s biggest plane maker. “The WTO should have no trouble in dealing with the question of whether government money – at no interest and with no repayment obligation – is a subsidy or not,” one Boeing official told Reuters.“Launch aid will be subject to a WTO call for it to be withdrawn,” predicted the official, who declined to be named.
But this had to be more than a simple call to the EU to stop using such forms of financing in the future and would involve the clawing back of some of the assistance, the officials said.The question of what happens to aid already paid in the event of the WTO declaring launch assistance to be in breach of trade rules is crucial.
Airbus, owned by European aerospace firm EADS and Britain’s BAE Systems, has already said it may seek help from its four state backers – France, Germany, Britain and Spain – for its planned mid-sized A350 airliner from next September, with funds likely to be given before the WTO rules in the subsidies case. Analysts say that Airbus move to develop the A350 to challenge Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner played a big part in triggering the US firm’s decision to go to the WTO.
A final ruling in the Airbus-Boeing dispute, including eventual appeals, could take up to two years. Although the WTO has only once called for illegal subsidies to be repaid – and in that case involving an Australian leather company it was not actually done – the current case is different, the Boeing officials argued. “It cannot be that a country can extend $20 billion in no-interest loans to an industry, lose a WTO case, and say ‘OK, we will not do it again’,” one official said.
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