EU Expects Tariffs Coming Soon Over Airbus Dispute
The European Union said the level of U.S. retaliation authorized by the World Trade Organization for the EU's subsidies to Airbus is likely to be released the week of Sept. 30, and that they regret that the 19-year Airbus-Boeing dispute is coming to tariffs.
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European Commissioner for Trade Cecilia Malmstrom told reporters in Brussels Sept. 16: "The US President likes to make deals, so we have offered the US to try to make a deal in order to try to jointly find a negotiated solution and see what we can do to discipline ourselves." According to quotes distributed by the EU press office, she said both the U.S. and the EU had "sinned" in their backing of Boeing and Airbus, respectively. She said the EU made "quite a detailed proposal" on how to restrict subsidies in the future, and that if the U.S. agreed to it, the WTO could require that China and Russia follow the same rules in their aircraft industries. "We regret that there has been no reaction so far to our proposals," she said.
"Our view is that there are enough tariffs in the world as it is so imposing tariffs on each other would not be a good solution," she said, but if the U.S. levies billions in tariffs in October, Europe will be forced to do the same if the WTO rules that the U.S. also did not halt its distorting subsidies to Boeing.
U.S. Chamber of Commerce CEO Tom Donohue told reporters in Washington that the U.S. trade representative did not say anything about aircraft-related tariffs against the EU when he met with him on Sept. 16.
"I think we ought to be careful about putting a lot of tariffs on each other," he said. "If we put a heavy tariff load on the Europeans, they'd have to wait a few months, but they'd return with the same burden on the U.S., and right now while we're trying to avoid slipping into recession."