Tanker Contract Undermines U.S. Security

Team Infidel

Forum Spin Doctor
Wall Street Journal
March 25, 2008
Pg. 21

Your March 18 editorial "Patriot Tanker Games" on the U.S. Air Force awarding the $35 billion tanker contract to French aerospace company EADS and its minority partner Northrop, characterized congressional critics as protectionists or, in your words, "politicians from Washington and Kansas using nationalism as cover for their pork-barreling." You argue correctly that defense contracts should "best serve American soldiers and taxpayers" and that anything less would "invite retaliation" by the Europeans.
But this critique misses important facts.
First, EADS has received tens of billions of dollars in illegal subsidies from the French and other European governments, a clear violation of international trade law that is now the subject of the largest lawsuit ever filed by the U.S. Trade Representative before the World Trade Organization. This suit has been applauded by the bipartisan leadership of Congress and by your editorial page. It is cognitive dissonance for the U.S. government to go before an international tribunal to stop EADS's illegal trade practices and then reward those unfair practices with billions in U.S. taxpayer dollars.
Because these subsidies underwrite the A330 aircraft that EADS will retrofit for the tanker contract, French and EU protectionism is being used to subsidize foreign vendors, undercut U.S. contractors, kill U.S. jobs, and undermine free and fair trade. The Defense Department originally included an offsetting provision in the evaluation criteria for these subsidies in order to vindicate free trade concerns, only to drop it after congressional pressure.
Even more disturbing are the dangers this contract poses to U.S. national security. After being lobbied by EADS, Defense changed its own rules preventing the export of new technologies -- like antimissile technologies -- that EADS may develop as a result of the contract, and which it is now free to export to rogue nations such as Iran and North Korea. France has extensive business ties with Iran, and EADS officials recently visited an air show in Iran.
The Defense Department also gave EADS a special exemption from the Berry Amendment, which requires domestic processing by contractors of specialty metals like titanium for national security reasons. Defense also made midstream and unexplained changes in evaluation criteria that favor the larger aircraft EADS is offering, and disfavored the more efficient midsize 767 Boeing aircraft.
The net result of all these exemptions and midcourse changes, often made immediately after EADS lobbying and congressional pressure, was to tilt the process in favor of EADS over Boeing. Defense Department briefings have made clear that without these inexplicable changes, Boeing scored higher on its evaluation criteria, with significantly more strengths and experience than EADS. Indeed, EADS has never built tankers.
As for EU retaliation, European defense acquisition policies are already highly protectionist; incredibly, just two weeks ago, the French objected to a proposal to open these markets to U.S. contractors.
Awarding the tanker contract to build an essential tool of the 21st century war fighter in the global struggle against terrorism to EADS undermines U.S. national security interests and trade policies. From my vantage point, the Defense Department threw the contract to French-based EADS, and this ill-advised and deeply flawed decision should be reversed.
Rear Adm. Paul W. Rohrer (Ret.), Washington
Editor's Note: The editorial referred to did not appear in the Current News Early Bird.
 
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