President Barack Obama may have watered down the Buy American provisions in his mega bailout bill, but there are still worrying signs that the US is pulling up the drawbridge. The President has just announced that the Defense Department is to review an existing contract to replace the Presidential helicopter, known rather oddly as Marine One. (Is it a floating helicopter? Anyway, it should actually be Marines 1 to 19, because that's how many there are in the fleet). In response to a question from, of all people, Senator John McCain, Obama said he thought his existing helicopter was "perfectly adequate", while admitting that he'd never had a helicopter before (still less, presumably, nineteen of them).
Here's the thing. The helicopter contract was awarded many years ago to a European consortium that includes Westland of the UK. What are the odds that this contract would have been cancelled if it had been won by a US company? How about if it had been won by a company in Senator McCain's home state?
This is not the first such example. Last year the Defense Department (then as now led by Robert Gates) cancelled a contract for airborne refuelling tankers that had been won fair and square by Airbus Industrie, over squeals of protest from Boeing. That company's lobbying to annul the contract paid off, and the business is to be retendered with new specifications. You have to suspect that they might just as well include in those specs "only US firms need apply", because there's surely little doubt about the outcome this time.
These are worrying trends. It will be interesting to see whether Lord Mandelson is as outspoken about this blatant US protectionism as he was about the refinery protest in Lincolnshire last month.
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