Losses and profits. The UK has always claimed autonomy and has never shied away from loneliness. But with the negotiations that drag on his exit from the European Union (EU), he learns every day the difficulty of falling out with his friends of yesterday. A new subject has been added to the already very long list of urgent cases to be initiated by Boris Johnson from the 1er next January, when the moorings will be definitively cast off with the Old Continent.
The Secretary of State for International Trade, “Liz” Truss, thus indicated on Wednesday December 9 that her country had decided to no longer apply customs taxes on American products, including Boeing planes, such as the World Trade Organization. (WTO) had given him the right to do so. A sovereign decision and a gesture towards the United States which hides a legal, political and industrial imbroglio. Airbus, furious at this decision, is at the head of a sector which employs 100,000 people in the country.
Boeing and Airbus have accused each other of unfair competition for sixteen years through subsidies. The very long lawsuit, arbitrated by the WTO, found a first outcome in 2019 when the institution authorized Washington to impose customs duties for 7.5 billion dollars on European products, airplanes of course, but also wines and spirits, including the famous Scotch whiskey.
Challenging negotiation
A year later, the WTO rendered a symmetrical judgment on aid to Boeing. Brussels therefore hastened to respond, in November 2020, with an arsenal of taxes worth 4 billion euros. It is the British part of this “tax” that Liz Truss will cancel, thanks to her regained independence, she says.
It is not so simple. The complaint was lodged by the EU, which negotiated as always on behalf of its 28 members. In theory, even if this unprecedented case should set a precedent, next year London will no longer be able to tax products in the name of an authorization granted by the WTO to Europe and not to its members.
The country therefore had no choice. But he presents this as a gesture of appeasement vis-à-vis the United States, in the perspective of the upcoming negotiation of a trade agreement, which promises to be as painful as that of Brexit. The first attempts had stumbled on agriculture … And it will not be easier with the pro-Irish Joe Biden. Mme Truss will therefore have a lot of work in 2021. Agreements have already been concluded with Japan and Canada. But the biggest is yet to come with the United States and China. The balance of power will no longer be the same and the country may well realize that loneliness is sometimes the enemy of autonomy.
