Recent Stories with tag world trade organization

Today the World Trade Organization released a confidential interim report on Boeing subsidies that the Wall Street Journal is already reporting criticizes payments to Boeing from the Department of Defense and NASA. And "without going into details," Ecology and Transport Minister Jean-Louis Borloo said, the report "finds in favour of the essence of the European Union's complaint."

UPDATE: Senator Maria Cantwell has issued a statement as well:

While I can’t discuss the details of the WTO’s preliminary ruling, I can say that the WTO panel rejected 75 to 80 percent of the European Union’s originally alleged subsidy claims. In dollar terms, the WTO found only a small fraction of the $20 billion in subsidies alleged by the EU. Most of those subsidies have long since been withdrawn. Importantly, the findings did not identify any existing prohibited subsidies, contrary to some media reports.

Allegedly unfair subsidies for Airbus and Boeing have been taking up a good deal of WTO staff time recently. France's stalwart defense of the WTO's ruling represents a marked shift since Airbus was found to have received some $20 billion in prohibited European subsidies in June. Then, the Wall Street Journal could find little WTO credibility on European shores:

Airbus officials said the EU would appeal the ruling. "There's not a single WTO case that hasn't been changed on appeal," an Airbus official said.

While on the one hand, the amount of aid appears roughly comparable in both instances (some $20 billion for Airbus and $24 billion for Boeing, which includes Washington state's tax breaks for the aircraft manufacturer), Boeing emphasized in a statement that there's subsidies and then there's subsidies.... (more)