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Comment by thePunisher | Hacker News Reader

But Boeing is forever crooning: "Yeah, but we put a man on the Moon." So NASA will lick their boots anytime and pay them whatever they want.

Off course, if Boeing messes up again, the carpet will be pulled from under their feet.

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I think it's more that the DoD props up Boeing in any way they can, from sweetheart contracts like this, to trade policies designed to destroy competition (the Bombardier thing), to outright industrial espionage of other firms (the leaks of Airbus's foreign negotiations).

Edit: Changed Embraer to Bombardier thanks to emiliobumachar's friendly reminder.

Not like Airbus’s hands are clean. https://ustr.gov/about-us/policy-offices/press-office/press-...

The WTO is run by a very specific brand of economists that don't see the value in a country subsidizing an industry to maintain local expertise in that industry.

I for one disagree pretty heavily with this ruling.

The WTO is run by bureaucrats who enforce the terms of the membership agreement. If national governments think it's important to subsidize local industries then they should negotiate agreements to allow for that. Don't blame the WTO.

That has the effect of cutting yourself off from more or less all trade.

The WTO leaves you with three options as not the US. 1) Capitulate and lose about any industries as the efficiencies of scales of the US economy steam rolls any industries they don't explicitly prop up in your country (the Israel model if you're lucky, the African model if you're unlucky). 2) Cut yourself off from essentially all global trade (the North Korea model) 3) form a large enough economy that you can flaunt more and more of the WTOs rules because what are they going to do? (The Chinese and EU model).

While it might make sense to provide an exemption for local industries that have critical defence or security implications, politicians may find themselves tempted to expand the scope of that to include other "national interest" products, like yoghurt:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-45866508

Are you suggesting that industrial espionage is okay if the targeted company is receiving subsidies from their government?

I'm sure the Chinese will love that angle.

No, more indicating that both these companies receive so much patronage from their respective national defense agencies/industries and provide employment cover to their respective intelligence agencies that I’m not sure there’s a clean line between actions of them as private actor vs them as state actor. Doesn’t rationalize espionage or maybe it does, I don’t know. I just don’t think the set-up of Airbus, the innocent industrial, as victims of evil Boeing is a realistic implication. These are both behemoths tightly hooked to their national defense apparatus.

As for China, I think that angle is their acknowledged policy plus some.

Boeing bought a large chunk of Embraer, then refused to pay after Embraer split itself in two.

Could you or anyone please explain what the DoD or its trade policies have to do with that? Or were you talking about another Embraer thing?

Sorry, Bombardier, not Embraer.

Them getting out of the commercial jet industry had the US's geopolitical fingerprints all over it.

NASA recently selected three teams to start development of new human lunar landers. Boeing's proposal was not one of the three selected.

I wonder if the layoffs announced this week will affect those programs.

Probably not. They have been transferring workers from the programs where contracts are slow (commercial airlines) to those with more steady revenues (DoD contracts) to minimize layoffs. I haven't read up on the newest wave of Boeing layoffs yet.

Incorrect. The layoffs were primarily in the commercial division, and the defense is primarily untouched.

That's what I meant to say (with the additional info that Boeing claims they laid off fewer workers from the commercial division because the company claims some of them were transferred to defense). I'm sorry if my wording was confusing.

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