The United States announced Friday that European governments had failed to end illegal subsidies for aircraft manufacturer Airbus, and so Washington will take the first step at the World Trade Organization (WTO) toward seeking sanctions on potentially billions of dollars of European goods. “We refuse to stand by while American businesses and workers are disadvantaged,” U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk said in a statement outlining Washington's intention to request a WTO panel to judge whether the European Union (EU) had complied with an earlier WTO ruling against government subsidies for Airbus.
