cavortingcheetah
7th Apr 2005, 02:35
:) I do not know if it's legal to do this but I have below, tried to copy an article I read in today's Times on the Internet.
April 07, 2005
Foreign Editor's Briefing
There are no winners in the Boeing-Airbus dogfight
By Bronwen Maddox
THIS has to be one of the stupidest rows it has picked. It is a mystery why the United States thinks it can win by setting Boeing on a collision course with Airbus.
Any ruling could harm both companies, as well as relations with Europe, just when the US claims to be trying to make them better. Whether Peter Mandelson likes it or not, this row could become the defining case of his stint as Europe’s Trade Commissioner.
This week the dispute has got worse. The exchanges between Mr Mandelson and Robert Zoellick, his American counterpart, have become more short-tempered. Chances of a resolution by Monday, the mutually chosen deadline, are not exactly zero, but they are heading in that direction.
Together, Airbus and Boeing are the entire market. Airbus is that rare thing: a world-class, European-grown, high-technology company. Boeing, a giant of an employer on the West Coast, also reaches deep in some of its work into the US’s vast defence budget. One’s loss is the other’s gain.
The row started last October when the Bush Administration, urged by Boeing, pulled out of a 12-year-old deal on how the US and the EU would each subsidise their aircraft industries.
Many in Europe assumed that the motivation was the presidential election. Jonathan Evans, the Conservative chairman of the European Parliament’s transatlantic relations group, notes that the decision came just before the second presidential debate, when Mr Bush appeared to be struggling.
The Bush Administration has denied this. Mr Zoellick, in Brussels this week, said that the Administration was committed to free trade and wanted to see the end of subsidies. He argued that the EU was reneging on an agreement to phase them out.
Those close to Airbus allege a more complicated commercial motive. They say that when Airbus chose to build the 800-seat A380, to fly from “hub to hub”, Boeing assumed that it would have the much larger market for smaller aircraft to itself. But when Airbus made clear that it would compete there, too, Boeing looked for a way of crying foul, and homed in on the subsidies given to these new designs.
No one denies that the European subsidies exist. The EU gives Airbus “launch investment” for new models, which it need pay back only if they are successful. The EU counters that Boeing, too, gets subsidies. It receives direct help from Washington State. It continues to benefit from a tax loophole that has been almost entirely closed for other companies. It develops some designs in partnership with Japanese companies, which themselves get aid. Hardest to quantify are the benefits from its defence work.
In the wrangling this week, Mr Zoellick said that he was willing to keep talking, but he appeared to dismiss Mr Mandelson’s offer last week to begin scaling down launch investment. He added sniffily that Mr Mandelson had failed to put the offer to him directly, saying: “I read his position in The Washington Post. That’s not exactly the way I did business with [Pascal] Lamy [Mr Mandelson’s predecessor].”
Personal acrimony may be part of the problem, but many in the European Commission are suspicious of Mr Zoellick. “There is a perception in Washington that Europe is a continent awash in subsidy, but that the US is a perfect free market,” one official said. However, as told in caustic inside accounts of Mr Bush’s first term, Mr Zoellick was good at talking the talk of free trade, but either had no influence as the Administration passed Bills protecting US farms and steelmakers or had no interest in arguing against them.
He says now that if a resolution cannot be found, perhaps it would be best if the row were referred to the World Trade Organisation. If this is US brinksmanship, it seems curiously risky. As Mr Evans puts it: “It is hard to imagine that the WTO would come down on Airbus’s launch aid, without also acting on Boeing.”
Then both sides would suffer.
Regards to all readers.
cc.
ome find it interesting.;) ;) ;)
April 07, 2005
Foreign Editor's Briefing
There are no winners in the Boeing-Airbus dogfight
By Bronwen Maddox
THIS has to be one of the stupidest rows it has picked. It is a mystery why the United States thinks it can win by setting Boeing on a collision course with Airbus.
Any ruling could harm both companies, as well as relations with Europe, just when the US claims to be trying to make them better. Whether Peter Mandelson likes it or not, this row could become the defining case of his stint as Europe’s Trade Commissioner.
This week the dispute has got worse. The exchanges between Mr Mandelson and Robert Zoellick, his American counterpart, have become more short-tempered. Chances of a resolution by Monday, the mutually chosen deadline, are not exactly zero, but they are heading in that direction.
Together, Airbus and Boeing are the entire market. Airbus is that rare thing: a world-class, European-grown, high-technology company. Boeing, a giant of an employer on the West Coast, also reaches deep in some of its work into the US’s vast defence budget. One’s loss is the other’s gain.
The row started last October when the Bush Administration, urged by Boeing, pulled out of a 12-year-old deal on how the US and the EU would each subsidise their aircraft industries.
Many in Europe assumed that the motivation was the presidential election. Jonathan Evans, the Conservative chairman of the European Parliament’s transatlantic relations group, notes that the decision came just before the second presidential debate, when Mr Bush appeared to be struggling.
The Bush Administration has denied this. Mr Zoellick, in Brussels this week, said that the Administration was committed to free trade and wanted to see the end of subsidies. He argued that the EU was reneging on an agreement to phase them out.
Those close to Airbus allege a more complicated commercial motive. They say that when Airbus chose to build the 800-seat A380, to fly from “hub to hub”, Boeing assumed that it would have the much larger market for smaller aircraft to itself. But when Airbus made clear that it would compete there, too, Boeing looked for a way of crying foul, and homed in on the subsidies given to these new designs.
No one denies that the European subsidies exist. The EU gives Airbus “launch investment” for new models, which it need pay back only if they are successful. The EU counters that Boeing, too, gets subsidies. It receives direct help from Washington State. It continues to benefit from a tax loophole that has been almost entirely closed for other companies. It develops some designs in partnership with Japanese companies, which themselves get aid. Hardest to quantify are the benefits from its defence work.
In the wrangling this week, Mr Zoellick said that he was willing to keep talking, but he appeared to dismiss Mr Mandelson’s offer last week to begin scaling down launch investment. He added sniffily that Mr Mandelson had failed to put the offer to him directly, saying: “I read his position in The Washington Post. That’s not exactly the way I did business with [Pascal] Lamy [Mr Mandelson’s predecessor].”
Personal acrimony may be part of the problem, but many in the European Commission are suspicious of Mr Zoellick. “There is a perception in Washington that Europe is a continent awash in subsidy, but that the US is a perfect free market,” one official said. However, as told in caustic inside accounts of Mr Bush’s first term, Mr Zoellick was good at talking the talk of free trade, but either had no influence as the Administration passed Bills protecting US farms and steelmakers or had no interest in arguing against them.
He says now that if a resolution cannot be found, perhaps it would be best if the row were referred to the World Trade Organisation. If this is US brinksmanship, it seems curiously risky. As Mr Evans puts it: “It is hard to imagine that the WTO would come down on Airbus’s launch aid, without also acting on Boeing.”
Then both sides would suffer.
Regards to all readers.
cc.
ome find it interesting.;) ;) ;)