世贸裁定欧盟补贴空中客车为非法

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As expected, the World Trade Organization has issued its opinion regarding the complaint by the United States and Boeing against Airbus in launch aid for the A380. Now keep in mind that the decision by the World Trade Organization is considered a confidential ruling. So you’re not gonna can hear any comment from Airbus or from Boeing, but we are hearing from the Wall Street Journal. According to people in Washington that the World Trade Organization has determined that the launch aid Airbus gave for the A380 was illegal and US is believing that the 4 billion dollars in launch aid that the Airbus will have to pay that back to the governments which gave that launch aid. The importance here is not just for the A380 bill, keep in mind that it also extends to the A350. We just had the British government announce that I think about a billion dollars worth of launch aid for that project and we’re gonna likely to see similar plans from the other European governments. But again, according to the Wall Street Journal, the World Trade Organization has determined that the launch aid Airbus has received for the A380 was illegal. Guys, back to you.

I am just watching Boeing shares right now, they’ve been higher anyway as part of today’s rally, but they have been moving up in the last 15 minutes or so, now a gain of about a percent and a half at 49 dollars.

And Phil,keep in mind this is a non-binding ruling in the sense that the World Trade Organization has said this is illegal. This shouldn’t happen anymore. It is really up to Airbus and the European governments to do something about it. You understand what I am saying? They can choose not to do anything about it Phil.Well, they probably could and ultimately we saw what happened with bananas a few years back. I mean that leads to a trade war which nobody wants, but this is not gonna have an immediate impact, this is gonna be dragged on for some time. So Mr. Secretary, weighing on this, I mean, this was your field certainly…

Well,this is a big deal. This has been going on for a long long time and a WTO decision is a huge deal. This is an important debate. It’s been extremely intensive across the Atlantic, and hopefully this will begin to settle things down. But I am also glad that it was done through the WTO, so it was done formally through a third party. But this is a huge step forward, I believe.

What do you think will happen, I mean, as Phil said it is not necessarily binding, but what are the ramifications, or what actions do you think might follow? Well, going forward, how, you know, whether the government will be involved, the European government and actually subsidizing a launch, a course, or a development course, which essentially is what the whole debate has been over and hopefully will change the policy which is interesting at a time when the governments are more and more involved. I think this is an important breakthrough to put everyone’s mind on separating private sector and public sector.