WASHINGTON, D.C.– After the United States and the European Union announced a five-year tariff suspension, the Republican Leader on the House Ways and Means Committee Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX) released the following statement:

“While specifics are not yet known about real changes the EU will agree to, this announcement reflects an important initial step in defending thousands of good American manufacturing jobs in aviation against the European Union’s illegal subsidies to Airbus.

“Rather than replace these unfair subsidies with new ones, the EU must hold firm to its long overdue commitment to remove them—or else face reimposition of WTO-authorized tariffs.

“This agreement also recognizes the harmful distortions caused by China’s massive subsidies and IP theft to build an aerospace sector, and those practices will soon face greater opposition in the U.S. and Europe if this agreement lives up to its potential.”

Background:

The United States and the European Union announced today a five-year suspension of each economy’s WTO-authorized countermeasures (tariffs) as part of an agreement that defines acceptable types of government support for aircraft development and production and prohibits other types of government support. The agreement also includes a commitment to closely cooperate to identify and address distortive subsidies and other industrial policies by non-market economies that distort the global aerospace market.