So - Delta CEO has a number of 40 billion dollars, of which he says much are direct cash subsidises. This is a massive violation of Free Trade Agreements: when the report is released, it will be very interesting to see where this number comes from and where it goes.
The cynic in me thinks this is the continued PR campaign in the battle for the public imagination (in an election year!) against "hostile foreigners taking our jobs". To wit:
- if the Delta CEO has this extremely compelling evidence of massive violations of WTO trade agreements etc. why has he not released the evidence and the US government started proceedings against the UAE in a dispute settlement immediately? Why is he going instead on a PR campaign in major newspapers/online reporting/news interviews and via lobbying on Capitol Hill?
- Related to this - why are there no figures on direct cash subsidies per airline quoted? Why does he simply lump "Qatar" and "the UAE" together, when he knows very well that Qatar, Abu Dhabi and Dubai are separate owners of separate airlines - and why does he simply quote 40 billion without giving a specific number on the direct cash subsidises, which I assume he already has information on?
- at 02:40 - it's pretty much only Tim Clark at EK that "huffs" about these accusations, the other two carriers generally keep silent. It's telling that Anderson simply labels this "the UAE" instead of "Dubai"
- this discussion is about EK and we see Anderson saying that the ME3, of which EK are a part of, of course, are lying about their statements. Then he brings up the fact that the data he sees is audited by "big accounting firms" as a way of bolstering his point, conveniently omitting the fact that EK is itself audited by one of these firms... (the other two aren't, but this isn't mentioned by Anderson)
- I found the statement at around 5 minutes quite distasteful: blaming US airline problems on 9/11 and the link to "arabian peninsula terrorists"...and then denying point blank any claim of bailout, whilst ignoring historical subsidy. It sounds almost as if this isn't really about getting to the truth of things objectively but really a rallying call to a political base to further their objectives...but then, alarm bells always start to ring when people use a massive tragedy in the furtherance of some sort of political aim...
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/...0LF01W20150211
Perhaps that Reuters article and the fact that US airlines and its JV partners are rapidly losing share is more concerning to them, and an election year is a perfect opportunity to get some political pressure exerted...
Here's a quote from the article:
The white paper, citing confidential financial statements from the Gulf airlines, alleged that their rivals have received subsidies from their home governments contrary to U.S. trade policy. The report says loans, tax exemptions and other support totaled more than $40 billion since 2004, which the Gulf carriers used to pay expenses that airlines typically must cover themselves, such as aircraft acquisitions.
Now it will be interesting if it turns out that a big chunk of that 40 billion dollars turns out to be Ex-Im Bank financing for Boeing purchases...!
And as for tax exemptions - is it really a tax exemption if there is no tax (for anyone!) in the first place to exempt them from...? In the case of EK which states it makes a profit and makes dividend payments to its owner, isn't the fact that the owner is ultimately 100% the government make the dividend payment essentially a tax payment anyway...?