Posts Tagged Boeing

On June 15, the United States and the European Union announced an agreement to finally solve their decades-long dispute over subsidies given to Boeing and Airbus. This was followed by a parallel agreement with the United Kingdom on June 17, since the UK is part of the Airbus consortium, but has exited the European Union.

Just four days after I mentioned that Boeing did not repay the billions it had already received from the 2003 Washington state subsidy package, the World Trade Organization approved EU retaliation for these subsidies in the form of $4 billion per year of tariffs on U.S. goods.

Boeing is ending production of the 787 Dreamliner at Everett, Washington, and moving it to its newer facility in North Charleston, South Carolina. The company says this is the most efficient approach to reducing production of the jet from 10 per year to six per year in response to falling demand due to the coronavirus pandemic. Moving production to South Carolina means that more than 1,000 Boeing workers at its Everett plant will likely lose their jobs as they no longer have a model to build.

Boeing Corporation has requested that the state of Washington stop providing it with tax breaks that the World Trade Organization (WTO) has on multiple occasions ruled to be an illegal subsidy under the Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures.

In the week and a half since Jerry Hirsch of the Los Angeles Times’ broke a story on billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk’s use of subsidies as key to his business’ plans, the story has gone viral.