Tit for Tat

Two wrongs don't make a right-winger happy

Found this rather amusing, since it's tangentially connected to my area of the business world.

White House to file case over Airbus

The thing is, that it is widely known, on both sides of the Atlantic, that the US and the E.U. illegally subsidise their respective airlines. What's more, not only is it KNOWN to be true, it can be proved as well.

What is not really spoken about are the reasons behind it. The E.U. did not seriously start breaking the law until they discovered that the NSA was passing insider information (obtained through Echelon) which allowed Boeing to underbid Airbus for a contract with Saudi Arabia worth 8 Billion. That's a lot of money, and to say it irked off the EU slightly, is what we call an understatement.

Of course, Echelon was only used because the US suspected (correctly) the EU often resorted to bribery in securing its business contracts. The fact that such bribes are considered routine (if unmentionable) in most EU countries, cuts no sway with their US counterparts.

The fact is that the size of ones bribe (or extra-contractual payment) is simply considered a measure of how serious you are about acquiring the contract. The EU perspective would simply have been "We wanted it more" and that if the US wanted it more, they would have offered more (of a bribe, that is).

I doubt it will get to the WTO (they'll probably settle) but I personally will find it hilarious, if this gets into a real mud-slinging match over who was the bigger law breaker, and who had the most justification. There's certainly enough mud to go around.
posted by Manchild at 8:30 AM