Re: Pentagon picks French Co Airbus for $150 Billion Contract
Thank you. Maybe the news source you are reading give a better perspective on what work gets done where.
All the news stories I checked for this gave the impression that while the design is European (and therefore a lot of royalty payments will be sent to EADS), the entire assembly and modification process will take place in the US; therefore implying that this will be essentially a "US built" plane. I am very interested in credible evidence to your assertion that 83% of all part manufacture will take place in Europe and US factories will just get peanuts (15-17%). It is this break-down between part assembly that is interesting. Please do provide a link.
By the way, the news stories I read, suggest that 7,500 jobs will be created just in California for part manufacture. These imply that this is meager in comparison to what will be done in Alabama. So my impression was that Alabama will get 30,000+ jobs. Now you are saying that all these 30,000+ will actually be created in Europe. Do you see the disconnect?
I think this should answer your question somewhat:
Hunter: Air Force Decision Costs U.S. More Than 100,000 Thousand Jobs
Washington D.C. – U.S. Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA), the Ranking Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, today released the following statement regarding the Air Force’s decision to award the KC-45A tanker contract to Northop Grumman-European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS):
“This is a blow and a disservice to the American defense industrial base so vital to our national security interests. This U.S. taxpayer-funded contract was conceded to a socialistic system utilizing a heavily subsidized bid that valued an undercut price ahead of thousands of American workers already struggling to pay their mortgages and send their children to college.
“The hardworking aerospace men and women, and U.S. taxpayers, are the losers in this decision that benefited the treasuries of European governments.
“These are the same European governments who are unwilling to support us in the Global War on Terror and over the last few months refused to provide even an additional one hundred soldiers apiece for Afghanistan operations. Instead, we have to send 3,200 additional U.S. Marines to Afghanistan while they take $35 billion in American taxpayer contracts. Two-thirds of the foreign countries involved in this deal also fail to spend the minimum of two percent of GDP on defense as required by NATO membership.
“Airbus will tell you that they are creating new jobs in Alabama for final assembly. However, they fail to honestly tell the American people that the vast majority of the jobs required to build these aircraft are actually contained in the thousands of subassemblies that are built overseas.”