US, EU reach truce on aircraft subsidies

THE United States and the European Union have agreed a truce in their near 17-year conflict over aircraft subsidies, bringing to a close one set of Trump-era tariffs which had soured relations between them.

The two sides have been battling since 2004 in parallel cases at the World Trade Organization over subsidies for US planemaker Boeing and European rival Airbus.

They agreed in March to a fourmonth suspension of tariffs on US$11.5 billion of goods from EU wine to US tobacco and spirits, which they had imposed in response to the row. Yesterday, they said they would remove them for five years, while still working on an overall deal on what subsidies to allow.

European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said in a statement an EU-US summit with US President Joe Biden had begun with a breakthrough.

US Trade Representative Katherine Tai said the two sides had agreed to clear statements on what support could be given to large civil aircraft producers and would cooperate to counter investments in aircraft by “non-market actors,” referring specifically to China.

“We have committed to meaningful cooperation,” she said.

Former EU member Britain, which was also involved in the dispute as a home to Airbus production, said it hoped for a similar deal within days. Tai is due to meet her British counterpart Liz Truss today.

The EU-US agreement removes one of two major trade irritants left over from Donald Trump's presidency, the other being tariffs imposed on grounds of national security on EU steel and aluminium imports.

The European Commission, which oversees EU trade policy, last month suspended for up to six months a threatened June 1 doubling of retaliatory tariffs on Harley-Davidson motorbikes, US whiskey and motorboats, and refrained from slapping tariffs on more US products from lipstick to sports shoes.

The United States may find it tougher to remove the metals tariffs, which also apply to other countries such as China, because they are still backed by many US metal producers and workers.

Brussels is also pushing what it dubs a new “positive agenda” on trade with Washington, including forging an alliance to drive WTO reform. The two are also likely to agree to cooperate on trade and technology, such as for setting compatible standards and facilitating trade in artificial intelligence.

THE Chinese scientist at the center of conspiracy theories that the coronavirus pandemic originated with a leak from her specialized lab in the city of Wuhan has denied her institution was to blame for the health disaster.

“How on earth can I offer up evidence for something where there is no evidence?” Dr Shi Zhengli told The New York Times in rare comments to the media.

“I don’t know how the world has come to this, constantly pouring filth on an innocent scientist,” she told the US daily.

US President Joe Biden last month ordered intelligence agencies to investigate the origin of the pandemic, including the lab-leak theory.

The leak hypothesis had been floated earlier during the global outbreak, including by Biden’s predecessor Donald Trump, but was widely dismissed as a conspiracy theory.

The international experts from the World Health Organization had already concluded that a “lab leak” was “extremely unlikely.”

The experts have made positive comments on China’s open and transparent attitude on many occasions.

Shi is an expert in bat coronaviruses, and some scientists have said she could have been leading so-called gain-of-function experiments, in which scientists increase the strength of a virus to better study its effects on hosts.

But in an e-mail to the paper, Shi said her experiments differed from gain-of-function experiments since they did not seek to make a virus more dangerous. Instead they were trying to understand how the virus might jump across species.

“My lab has never conducted or cooperated in conducting GOF experiments that enhance the virulence of viruses,” she said.