The EU’s outgoing trade chief has lashed out at “euro bashing” in the U.S. presidential campaign, which he said had sparked an all-out battle over state aid for aircraft manufacturing rivals Airbus and Boeing.
“It appears to me that euro bashing in this election campaign has become very popular,” European Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy said in an interview with the German weekly Die Zeit to be published on Thursday.
Washington last week filed a complaint at the World Trade Organization challenging European loans that help Airbus develop aircraft, prompting a counter-suit from the European Union against other forms of U.S. support for Boeing.
Washington denies its move was a bid to boost President George W. Bush’s standing in Democrat-leaning Washington state, Boeing’s industrial heartland, ahead of next month’s election.
It says the timing had more to do with the prospect of European government subsidies for the launch of a new Airbus plane, the A350, which would rival Boeing’s “Dreamliner” 7E7.
“Airbus has become for us in Europe a symbol for everything that makes up a modern Europe,” Lamy told Die Zeit.
“That’s being used in the campaign because the state of Washington, where neither (presidential) candidate has a clear lead, is where Boeing is headquartered,” he said, adding that trade problems should not be used for politics.
Lamy said Europe would have the upper-hand in the dispute at the WTO, telling the weekly: “We are certain that the arguments of the other side are weaker than ours.”