ABSTRACT
This analysis of the U.S. large commercial aircraft (LCA) manufacturing sector aims to provide greater detail and accuracy than previous studies on this vexed question (see chapter two). The information provided here is critical to the LCA trade debate, as since the beginning of the 1990s, the U.S. government has felt able to increase federal support for the large commercial aircraft sector, seemingly without fear of invoking a legal challenge under the ensemble of GATT regulations, which apply to LCA trade. In short the U.S. authorities seem confident that billions of dollars of support for the American aerospace industry, including the LCA manufacturing sector, does not constitute subsidy. The analysis here will contest this assumption and will show that subsidy does indeed exist. This study is being written to widen and deepen the European understanding of the U.S. LCA manufacturing industry and to seek to trace with greater accuracy the flows of government financial support which go to U.S. LCA manufacturing companies, notably the Boeing Corporation, which absorbed its one U.S. rival, McDonnell Douglas, in 1997.
