Boeing Commercial Airplanes is the beneficiary of a ruling by the World Trade Organization Appellate Body that reverses a ruling made in November 2016, a decision that found Boeing benefitted from an illegal subsidy via Washington State tax credits aimed at supporting production of Boeing aircraft there. The subsidies had been protested by the European Union, nominally in the behalf of Boeing’s rival Airbus SAS.
This ruling follows a June decision by WTO that mostly cleared the U.S. of providing unfair support to Boeing, but left undetermined whether the OEM continued to benefit unfairly from Washington State business tax-rate reduction for the 777X program. Now, that detail has been addressed.
"The WTO has rejected yet another of the baseless claims the EU has made as it attempts to divert attention from the $22 billion of subsidies European governments have provided to Airbus and that the WTO has found to be illegal," sated Boeing General Counsel J. Michael Luttig.
In its statement on the new ruling, Boeing credited the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR), which represented the U.S. (thus, Boeing) in the WTO proceeding.
The WTO also upheld an earlier dismissal of EU's claims against the remainder of the incentives.
"This was a sweeping and clean win for the United States," according to Lutticg. "It is now up to the European Union to comply with the WTO findings against it, and end the enduring practice of launch aid, which Airbus' government supporters have continued to provide to each and every Airbus model."
