The United States and Europe should agree to cooperate in opposing any future “hurtful” subsidies used by China to build up its commercial aircraft industry, US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer told Reuters in an interview.
Lighthizer said he was working to settle a 16-year-old dispute between Washington and Brussels over past government aid to aircraft manufacturers, but expressed frustration that current World Trade Organization rules would not prevent future subsidies by the European Union or China.
“If this plays out, they can start a new subsidy tomorrow, and drag out that litigation for five or six years, and there’s nothing under the WTO that you can do about it at all,” Lighthizer said in a rare interview late on Tuesday.
