With the World Trade Organization (WTU) finding that both Boeing and Airbus received billions in subsidies, it will now be ruling on the latest sanction requests from the U.S., either over the summer or into September. In April, President Trump proposed a list of tariffs on European products totaling US$21 billion and which included Roquefort cheese, wine, champagne, olive oil and seafood such as oysters. Now, an additional 89 items worth US$4bn have been added to the list including olives, Italian and Dutch cheese, Scotch whisky and Irish whiskey, pasta, coffee and ham, as well as certain copper products and other metals. In May this year Trump’s tariffs of 25% on European steel and 10% on aluminum came into effect after he had declared that: “trade wars are good.” In retaliation, the EU has imposed a limit on the volume of steel imports from the U.S.
The war over subsidies given to Boeing and Airbus has already seen the threat of the imposition of tariffs on planes and tractors on top of food products. This latest threat comes just day’s after a truce had been reached in the trade war between the U.S. and China. At the Paris Air Show in mid-June, Reuters reported that the U.S. could be open to negotiations on an “enforceable mechanism” which would permit Airbus to receive government funding on commercial terms, while the U.S. would create trade ruling-compliant tax incentives for Boeing.
