The European aerospace company Airbus has recently blamed the United States for China’s unfair trade practices. This “blame the victim” argument accuses the United States of being at fault for China’s repeated violations of international trade agreements and the theft of intellectual property from American companies. Such a stance is outrageous and should not be rewarded.
Ironically, this French company is in the process of demanding U.S. taxpayer money to build next generation refueling tanker aircraft for the Air Force. The American government should not contract with a European company that cannot be trusted to manufacture aircraft for the U.S. military, especially when that company has aligned with America’s most dangerous adversary.
It seems clear that Airbus identifies with Chinese trade practices, as the company has a history of engaging in similar unethical business conduct.
Although blaming the U.S. government for China’s well-documented unethical and illegal trade practices may not be the best way to secure contracts from the U.S. government, Airbus remains undaunted.
“The CEO of Airbus has a view on who’s to blame for the trade wars that have engulfed the global economy, but unusually he’s not pointing fingers at China,” Fortune reported. Airbus CEO Guillaume Faury is angry that his company has not muscled out American companies — and Chinese companies for that matter — to monopolize the world market for commercial and government aircraft.
It is absurd to blame America for China’s notorious cheating. Joe Biden said on May 14: “For years, the Chinese government has poured state money into Chinese companies across a whole range of industries: steel and aluminum, semiconductors, electric vehicles, solar panels — the industries of the future — and even critical health equipment, like gloves and masks” leading to illegal subsidies that end up “dumping the excess products onto the market at unfairly low prices, driving other manufacturers around the world out of business.” There is no profit motive for China’s heavily subsidized products, because the government will provide the profit.
In addition to illegal subsidies and dumping, Biden noted how China forces American companies to transfer technology to do business there. That is not the U.S. government’s fault. Biden cited “cyber espionage” and said China’s business practices are “not competition. It’s cheating.” I seldom agree with Joe Biden, but he is right about that.
Donald Trump was also tough on China as president. When Trump announced $50 billion in tariffs in 2018 on Chinese imports, he remarked, “China apparently has no intention of changing its unfair practices related to the acquisition of American intellectual property and technology.” The past two administrations were responding to Chinese cheating, not causing it.
Airbus has its own problems. “Airbus SE (Airbus or the Company), a global provider of civilian and military aircraft based in France, has agreed to pay combined penalties of more than $3.9 billion to resolve foreign bribery charges with authorities in the United States, France and the United Kingdom,” the Department of Justice announced on January 31, 2020. The settlement indicated that the company had been accused of using “third-party business partners to bribe government officials, as well as non-governmental airline executives, around the world and to resolve the Company’s violation of the Arms Export Control Act (AECA) and its implementing regulations, the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), in the United States.”
It seems clear that Airbus identifies with Chinese trade practices, as the company has a history of engaging in similar unethical business conduct.
Part of the charge against Airbus is that it paid bribes in China and tried to hide the bribes. The fact that “international corruption involving sensitive U.S. defense technology presents a particularly dangerous combination,” as the Justice Department noted, speaks to the idea that Airbus has disqualified itself from U.S. government contracts. It is clear Airbus blames America, not China, for Chinese protectionism and unfair trade practices, because the French company has a close relationship with the Chinese.
It makes no sense for the Pentagon to award any new contracts to Airbus until the company changes direction and abandons unfair trade practices. Find an American company to build aircraft for the U.S. military.