The WTO delivered a crucial report on Monday on the long--running EU-US battle over subsidies to Boeing and Airbus that the European aircraft maker said vindicated the EU complaint.
However, Boeing quickly rejected that conclusion, saying the report was a “sweeping rejection” of the European allegations of illegal subsidies.
The WTO provided its confidential report dealing with Airbus’s charges against Boeing to the US and EU governments. Under WTO rules, the report is supposed to remain private until its public release, but both Airbus and Boeing, as well as the EU, were quick to claim victory in the seven-year dispute over multibillion-dollar subsidies.
“We welcome the WTO panel’s confirmation of its initial findings regarding the support provided to Boeing by the US government,” EU trade spokesman John Clancy said in a statement.
“This solid report sheds further light on the negative consequences for the EU industry of these US subsidies and provides a timely element of balance in this long-running dispute,” he added.
The US criticized the EU for commenting on the report and said it would provide its own “detailed views” on the report when it is publicly released.
“Under WTO rules, the report remains confidential until it is translated and released to all WTO members,” Nefeterius McPherson, a spokeswoman for US Trade Representative Ron Kirk, said in an e-mail. “Despite that the EU has publicly commented on the report, at this time we will simply say that the United States is confident that the WTO will confirm the US view that European subsidies to Airbus dwarf any subsidies that the United States provided to Boeing.”
McPherson noted the report would be made public after it has been translated into French and Spanish.
“The WTO has not indicated how long this will take, but given the size and complexity of this report, that process could take two or three months,” she said.
The report is the latest twist in the subsidies war. A WTO ruling in June partially upheld Washington’s parallel complaint against subsidies for Airbus, the France-based aircraft unit of the European Aeronautics Defence and Space Company (EADS).
The Geneva-based trade referee is already hearing an appeal by both sides against the June ruling.
Airbus said the latest WTO report backed its allegations and estimated it has lost at least US$45 billion in sales due to the illegal aid.
“Today’s World Trade Organization decision confirms Boeing has received massive and illegal government subsidies for many decades and they have had a significant and ongoing negative effect on European industry,” Airbus said.
While not giving the details of the ruling, the European -Commission said the probe found that Boeing’s receipt of research and development funding from US government bodies had had “negative consequences” for Airbus.
“Airbus applauds the excellent result achieved by the European Commission and the member states,” said Rainer Ohler, Airbus’ head of public affairs.
“From today, Boeing can no longer pretend that it doesn’t benefit from generous and illegal state subsidies. It has been doing so from the start and it’s time to stop the denial,” he said. “The myth that Boeing doesn’t receive government aid is over and we hope this sets the tone for balanced and productive negotiations going forward.”
Boeing countered that the WTO had issued a “sweeping rejection” of EU claims it had received illegal subsidies.
“Today’s reports confirm the interim news from last September that the WTO rejected almost all of Europe’s claims against the United States, including the vast majority of its R&D [research and development] claims — except for some [US]$2.6 billion,” Boeing said in a statement. “This represents a sweeping rejection of the EU’s claims.”
“Nothing in today’s reports even begins to compare to the [US]$20 billion in illegal subsidies that the WTO found last June that Airbus/EADS has received,” Boeing said.
“The WTO’s decisions confirm that European launch aid stands alone as a massive illegal subsidy only available to Airbus, which has seriously harmed Boeing, distorted competition in the aerospace industry for decades, and resulted in the loss of tens of thousands of good-paying US jobs,” the Chicago-based aerospace and defense giant said.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts