Manufacturing aid: bluster and diplomacy

摘要

It seems like old times, with Boeing stomping around complaining about subsidies to Airbus just as it did in the late 1980s and early 1990s. That row calmed down when the Americans and Europeans signed a bilateral deal in 1992. That settlement limited launch aid to 33% of the development cost of a new model (in practice, Airbus) and indirect government aid from defence research contracts (in effect, the Pentagon and NASA deal for Boeing) to 4% of the firm's turnover. Airbus went on to develop new models and grab more than half the civil jet market from Boeing.