Paging Captain Obvious...

Long rationalizing that Boeing aircraft sales are a subsidy Europeans plumping for their cronyistic monomania in business have to take a step back today. The WTO whose rounds of agreements they scuttled more than once came to seem like a useful instrument to them – that is, until they saw it doing what it was supposed to: resolve trade disputes:

The World Trade Organization ruled on Tuesday that the European plane maker Airbus received improper subsidies for its $13 billion A380 superjumbo jet and several other airplanes, hurting Boeing, its American rival, industry officials in the United States and Europe said.

Despite the fact that EADS/Airbus need not take any risks with its’ own revenue by not having to pay off the “loans” governments give it until a venture is profitable, the bleating about them not getting a fair shake will likely resume after a few weeks of the memory of this ruling fading away.

Think about it: a subsidized monopolist entity trying to give itself a form of ‘victim status’ as a way of bypassing the commercial challenges real businesses face.

Boeing has contended that the subsidies helped Airbus vault past it in 2003 to become the world’s largest plane maker. Boeing hopes that the ruling could help it catch up once its new 787 Dreamliner jet hits the market.

The decision was made as tensions mounted over European claims of protectionism in the Pentagon’s competition for a $35 billion to $40 billion contract for Air Force refueling tankers, the latest scrape between the companies.

Stranger still, the push for the sales deal with the United States Air Force was the clincher in a deal to produce enough of an order book and revenue to make viable the replacement of the Europeans’ military lift capacity.

Sales to USAF were to functionally subsidize EADS, Airbus, and the heavy lift capacity of the European militaries who signed up rejuvenate their aging, nearly non-existent fleets.

Nice trick, if you can keep them all bamboozled, especially since it will have the fringe benefit of artificially inflating EADS’ market share at the cost of both the American and European taxpayer.

The W.T.O. is also looking into a European complaint that Boeing has benefited improperly from subsidies from its military business. Airbus said in the statement that “resolution will finally only be found in trans-Atlantic negotiations.”

The last phrase of which should be “nuts,” because it fits their view that this is warfare with their real enemy itself, and taking pride in that foe’s unwillingness to harm them.