BOEING RECEIVED at least $5.3 billion in US subsidies that helped it launch its groundbreaking 787 Dreamliner passenger jet much faster than it could otherwise, the World Trade Organisation ruled yesterday.
Funding from US states, Nasa and the defence department gave the US aircraft maker an unfair advantage over Airbus, its European rival, according to the WTO’s latest finding in the protracted row between Europe and the US over illegal state handouts to their respective aircraft manufacturers.
Airbus suffered “significant lost sales” of some of its aircraft and “significant price suppression”, the trade body said in its final report on EU complaints that US support for Boeing breached international trade rules.
The findings cast new light on the impressive 840-plus orders Boeing has garnered since 2004 for its technically advanced 787 Dreamliner jet, which promises 20 per cent more fuel efficiency than similarly sized long-haul jets thanks to the lightweight plastic composites used to build it.
The WTO said that without the research and development subsidies Boeing received, it “would not have been able to launch an aircraft incorporating all of the 787 technologies in 2004 with promised deliveries beginning in 2008”.
Airbus and the EU seized on the findings, which Airbus said had followed “years of unfounded accusations and attempts to demonise” it, especially during its long campaign for a $35 billion US Air Force refuelling aircraft contract that Boeing won in February.
European officials conceded that the value of the subsidies identified by the WTO was far less than the $19 billion in subsidies they had claimed in their complaint, and the amount of subsidies another report in June found EU countries had given to Airbus.
That report, still under appeal, found the Toulouse-based manufacturer's A380 superjumbo, the world's biggest passenger jet, had received prohibited export subsidies from several European countries, in the form of launch aid. Boeing has calculated Airbus received $15 billion in launch aid, which includes $4 billion for the A380. – ( Financial Timesservices)