Refer Boeing to the WTO, don’t make empty threats – Barry Gardiner

Barry Gardiner MP, Labour’s Shadow International Trade Secretary, speaking
after the UK threatened retaliatory action against Boeing because the USA
Department of Commerce recommended a 219.63 per cent tariff on the Bombardier C
Series aircraft, said:

“Theresa
May tried to avert this dispute when she spoke with President Trump weeks ago.
Clearly she was less persuasive than she led us to believe. But her ineffective
pleas have now been compounded by the Defence Secretary’s bumbling aggression.
The correct way to resolve this trade dispute is not to threaten Boeing that
future ‘significant defence contracts’ are in jeopardy, it is to use the rules
that are already in place in the global trading system through the WTO.

"The
UK and Canada must urgently sit down with Boeing to find a resolution to this
row which threatens so many jobs.

“Instead
of putting ourselves in the wrong by threatening to victimise Boeing – an empty
threat given that thousands of jobs in the UK rely on the aerospace sector –
the UK as one of the founders of the World Trade Organisation, should refer the
case to the WTO dispute settlement procedure.

“For
subsidies to be actionable under WTO Rules they must be shown to cause material
harm. This is why the American case has no merit. Boeing ceased to manufacture
planes for the single aisle market served by the C Series long ago and they did
not even compete for the Delta contract therefore they can show no material
harm arose to their company.

"This
is the correct, grown-up way for a country to behave under a rules based
trading system, not to issue wild threats that would themselves violate WTO
Rules. That the Trade Secretary either does not know or has not bothered to
advise his cabinet colleagues of this speaks volumes about his own
competence.”

Ends