US imposes tariffs on EU products over long-running Airbus-Boeing dispute

The civil aircraft subsidies dispute between the United States and the European Union has escalated further with Washington imposing tariffs on certain products from France and Germany. According to the United States Trade Representative, the move is a countermeasure to the tariffs imposed on American goods by the European Union in September this year, which the US government says is "unfair". The dispute is part of the long-running battle between European multinational Airbus and American firm Boeing, two of the world's largest aircraft manufacturers. 

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The European products that are subject to tariffs imposed by the United States include aircraft manufacturing parts from France and Germany, certain non-sparkling wine from France and Germany, and certain cognac and other grape brandies from France and Germany. The United States was cleared by the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to impose tariffs on EU products last year. But Washington claims that while implementing the authorised countermeasures it exercised restraint. 

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'EU refused to change its approach' 

The US Trade Representative said that the European Union while imposing the authorised tariffs on American products used data from a period when the global economy was in shatters due to the COVID-19 pandemic. "The result of this choice was that Europe imposed tariffs on substantially more products than would have been covered if it had utilized a normal period.  Although the United States explained to the EU the distortive effect of its selected time period, the EU refused to change its approach," USTR said in a statement. 

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The USTR further added that as a result of EU's 'unfair' retaliation and to "keep the two actions proportionate to each other", it is changing its reference period to the same period used by the bloc. The USTR said that the EU made another decision that unfairly increased the amount of retaliation. It said that the EU calculated the amount of trade excluding the United Kingdom, which increased the retaliation for the 52 days in which Britain remained within the EU for tariff purposes. "The EU needs to take some measure to compensate for this unfairness," it continued. 

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