Don’t Listen to Sarkozy: U.S. Tanker Contract Should Create U.S. Jobs
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Today French President Sarkozy reportedly is lobbying President Obama to delay the U.S. government’s decision to award its $35 billion contract for the Air Force’s new refueling tanker. Sarkozy wants the contract for Northrop-EADS, a heavily subsidized French defense firm that recently pulled its proposal from the bidding process. Northrup-EADS now is mounting a huge public relations campaign to get the U.S. government to reverse what it regards as an unfair advantage for Boeing, which says the competition is fair.
If Northrup-EADS won the contract, most of the jobs would be in Europe. The few thousand jobs created here under an EADS contract would be low-paid assembly jobs with no union representation. Meanwhile, there are some 17 million jobless workers in this nation, and as leaders of two AFL-CIO constituency groups point out, granting the contract to Boeing would create at least 50,000 family-supporting jobs, save taxpayer dollars and protect fair trade laws.
Boeing Official Calls out French for Protectionism
While French-based Airbus is trying to grab a multibillion aerial tanker contract from the U.S. Air Force, its home country won’t even allow the United States to compete in its defense market. Now, a leading French businessman is calling out the French government for its protectionist policies.
In a recent press conference, Boeing France President Yves Galland, a former French trade official and politician, said the United States has ordered hundreds of U.S. Army helicopters from Eurocopter, an Airbus subsidiary, but France has not bought any defense equipment from Boeing in 30 years.
This is an important issue because the U.S. government is still mulling whether to grant a $35 billion Air Force aerial tanker contract to either Northrop-EADS (Airbus) or Boeing. The contract was rebid after the Government Accountability Office upheld Boeing’s protest of the original decision to award the contract to Northrup-EADS.
