Airbus

AIRBUS

Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Oklahoma for yielding to my colleague, Senator Murray, and me. We are going to speak about the resolution that the Senate passed, and passed with large support from my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, which we are very happy to see. The issue of a level playing field for a competitive aerospace market is something that is critically important to the American people and to the workforce of America. I thank our leaders, Senators FRIST and REID, and Senator Baucus for bringing this resolution to the Senate floor today and for moving this through the process so that we can send a message from the Senate about how important we think it is to have a competitive aerospace market.

My colleague has been following this issue for years and is going to lay out some of the issues that we in the United States have been trying to elevate to the point of awareness so we can establish a competitive marketplace. The bottom line is, negotiations that were begun in January of this year between the United States and the European Union to discuss how to battle the competitive aerospace market today that doesn't unfairly have government backing and subsidization of major aerospace manufacturers, those negotiations have broken down. Now we are at a point where the issues to be resolved, specifically launch aid and the financing of the production of a new A350 plane by the European Union, are something it is important to address quickly.

The reason I say that is because we know when you have the financial backing of a government juxtaposed to the financial backing of the private sector, in the United States, when Boeing builds a plane, it goes out and finances that with the backing of the capital markets, of Wall Street, of the private banking institutions, and they have to prove that plane is a success. They don't get any forgiveness on the loan. They don't get any special rate. They don't get any discounts if the plane is not a success. When they go to the capital markets, they have to prove the success of the marketplace.

I can tell you now that success is happening with the 787 plane, the newest product that Boeing launched a year ago and is out there in the marketplace selling today. But they are competing against a plane that is being or has the potential to be financed by the European Union. So if you think about the A350 getting launch aid, or potentially getting launch aid from the European Union, it doesn't matter whether the plane is a success. It doesn't matter how many planes are sold. They have a special arrangement so that in the backing of the financing of that plane, the European Union becomes the deep pocket.

What does that mean to consumers who are buying these planes and what does it mean to the workforce? It means simply this: The Americans have a disadvantage when selling Boeing planes around the globe because they have to meet the competitive markets of private financing while the Europeans--it doesn't matter whether their plane is a success--get the backing of the European Union. The whole global economy is based on a fair and competitive marketplace in which we are going to drive down costs to consumers--the airlines, in this particular case--and we are going to let the best airplane win in the marketplace because they have designed a product that the workforce, the consumers, the aviation industry wants to see.

We don't want government making those decisions. We want the private sector making the decisions. That is why I am so glad the administration has taken an aggressive approach on this issue and has pushed for the discussions that are now ending. The administration, through the USTR office in the White House, has said if the European Union continues to use new launch aid subsidies for the A350 plane, then, yes, we are going to go to the World Trade Organization and file a complaint. That is an appropriate action by this administration.

What would be better is if the Europeans would sit down at the table and come back to this discussion that should have been part of the 1992 discussion on how to have a competitive aerospace industry. But that didn't happen. So now in January of this year, the two sides, the European Union and the United States, sat down at a table and said they were going to negotiate in good faith. Part of that negotiation was to have the parties at the table make no new government support agreements during the time of the negotiations. Yet that is exactly what Airbus is now coming in to talk about--subsidies and launch aid for the A350.

It is important that this body send the message it sent today, that we are going to be behind the administration, behind USTR, behind the White House in making sure a fair and competitive aerospace market takes place, that we are not going to sit by and see one manufacturer make a great product that has basically taken off in the marketplace, getting sales, getting people to buy the plane because they built it the old-fashioned way. They had an idea. They had the right feature set. They had the right product. They had the right design and customers are buying that. Yet they may have to compete against somebody who has the deep financial backing of a government that doesn't care whether it is the right feature set or the right product.

So we in the United States care greatly about the competitiveness of this marketplace. We have lots of jobs in aerospace, and we certainly, in Washington State, have benefited from that and so have many of my other colleagues in the Senate because there are probably aerospace manufacturing jobs all over the country.

But the point is that we have to have a competitive marketplace, not just in aerospace but in other areas. The sooner we get back to the table and address the issue of how unfair launch aid is as a concept, the sooner we can get to a competitive marketplace. And the sooner we can get a fair and competitive marketplace, the sooner the consumers will win and the United States will continue to have a level playing field in which our workforce, which is producing a great product that is winning in the marketplace, will continue to win based on the success of their results and not be basically disadvantaged because of an unlevel playing field.

So I am glad to be here with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to speak enthusiastically about the resolution we just passed. I hope it will be noticed by the European Union that we are united--Democrats and Republicans--in getting this issue addressed and that a competitive aerospace market that is driven by private investment backing is the best way to go for us, not just as a nation but for true global competition.

I yield the floor.

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