SEATTLE – President Bush said Friday that European nations should end their subsidies of the Airbus plane manufacturing consortium, saying the United States is prepared to take action before the World Trade Organization to stop them.
Bush made the comments after meeting with Alan Mulally, chief executive of Boeing Commercial Airplanes, and about 30 Boeing employees at a company hangar at Boeing Field.
The president said he has instructed U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick to inform European officials of the U.S. position at a meeting in September.
“We think these subsidies are unfair and that (Zoellick) should pursue all options to end these subsidies, including bringing a WTO case if need be,” Bush told reporters after the Boeing meeting.
Bush said he is confident American companies can compete with foreign competitors as long as the playing field is level.
“Getting rid of subsidies will make the trade fair,” he said.
Airbus, established in 1970 as a consortium of European companies, has received large government subsidies from European nations and continues to receive them. It is based in Toulouse, France.
“I think those subsidies are unfair,” the president said. “It’s unfair to this American company,” meaning Boeing.
“We are pleased that the president is determined to see U.S. negotiators create a more appropriate framework with their EU counterparts,” Harry Stonecipher, Boeing president and chief executive, said in a statement. “The current framework cannot be justified and needs to be changed immediately.”
Bush also attended a Medina fund-raiser Friday that raised $2.4 million for efforts to get voters to back party candidates on Election Day.
Approximately 100 anti-Bush demonstrators gathered at Medina Park to protest the president’s visit. About a dozen Bush supporters showed up as well.
Police in this community, home of former Simpson Timber Chairman Gary Reed, who was hosting the fund-raiser, had braced for anywhere from 200 to 1,000 demonstrators.
At about 6 p.m., some 60 demonstrators left the park to march closer to the Reed home. They were blocked by police on bicycles as they drew within a few blocks of the estate.
At the fund-raiser, hundreds paid $2,500 per person, $10,000 for a photograph with the president or $25,000 for a picture and a private reception.
U.S. Rep. Jennifer Dunn, head of the Bush-Cheney Washington re-election campaign, said she expected the event to raise more than $1.75 million.
The Republican National Committee will se the money for get-out-the-vote efforts in competitive states, Dunn said.
Bush lost Washington by about 5 percentage points in 2000, but Dunn said she is confident the president can win the state this year.
Bush’s Washington visit came after a campaign stop in Beaverton, Ore., where he surrounded himself with small business owners and touted his economic policies.
Earlier on Friday, he announced $15 million in federal funding to dredge and deepen a 100-mile stretch of the Columbia River to make room for larger vessels.
Bush and Kerry stump for NW votes
Democratic nominee attracts more than 40,000 in Portland
Associated Press
PORTLAND, Ore. – Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry ended a two-week cross-country campaign swing in Portland Friday, where he and celebrity supporters got a rousing welcome from the largest crowd to attend a political speech in the city in at least a decade.
Portland fire officials estimated the crowd at between 40,000 and 50,000 people on the Willamette River waterfront, on a day when President Bush was campaigning just a few miles away.
Kerry competed head-to-head for TV airtime with Bush, who spoke at an invitation-only town hall meeting of about 2,000 people in Beaverton.
His wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, gave a lengthy introduction to her husband that ended as Bush wound up his Beaverton visit. Network affiliates in Portland stuck with Bush until Kerry himself took the microphone.
When Kerry took the stage in Portland, he focused mainly on national issues – including war and tax reform – that have cropped up often during his “Believe in America” tour that began after he accepted the Democratic nomination in Boston two weeks ago.
“There isn’t a person here who doesn’t get up in the morning and play by a set of rules, and you make choices in your lives,” Kerry said. “You try to live within the budget. You have a right to expect a government that lives by the same rules you do.”
Long lines snaked around two city blocks early Friday, as Kerry supporters sipped bottled water and used campaign placards to shield their faces from the sun. Most didn’t get in.
David Rasmussen, special events inspector for the Portland Fire Bureau, closed the gates two hours before Kerry spoke, when 22,000 people had entered a fenced-off area around the stage. The entire crowd on the waterfront during the speech was between 40,000 and 50,000 people, Rasmussen said.
He said no other political speech has attracted as large a crowd in Portland in at least a decade, when he became a fire inspector. No formal records are kept, he said.
Kerry was introduced by, among others, actor Leonardo DiCaprio and rocker Jon Bon Jovi. DiCaprio praised Kerry for his environmental policies. Bon Jovi didn’t speak, but played the ’80s hits “Living on a Prayer” and “Dead or Alive.”
The Hollywood presence was a crowd-pleasing touch, analysts said.
Republican Sen. Gordon Smith dismissed Kerry’s appearance with celebrities as coming to “hang with Hollywood.”
In his speech, Kerry called for energy independence from the Middle East and federal policies that would reduce health insurance premiums.
He returned several times to his environmental record, suggesting that Oregon hunters and fishermen in the crowd understood the importance of maintaining healthy habitat for wildlife, and that conservation projects could create jobs.
“Some politicians want you to believe that it’s one or the other,” with jobs or the environment, Kerry said. “I say protecting the environment builds jobs.”
At the rally, Kerry said he was looking forward to windsurfing in the Columbia River Gorge today, to relax after his coast-to-coast tour of 22 states by bus, train, helicopter, plane and ferry.
“One of the things that keeps me going is knowing I get a free day tomorrow, and I’m going windsurfing,” he said.
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