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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Techplayer who wrote (403862)	5/7/2003 11:07:49 PM
From: TigerPaw	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

there will not be another cold war. It may already be underway. We have enough weapons already... Our weapons protect armies, when it may be business that is under attack. Suspicions rise as US groups endure a bad week in Europe By Paul Betts, Kevin Done and Dan Roberts Published: May 8 2003 5:00 \| Last Updated: May 8 2003 5:00 Conspiracy theorists looking for evidence of economic retaliation following the transatlantic divide over Iraq have had a bumper week. But it has been US businesses operating in Europe that have taken the knocks from governments and regulators rather than France and Germany getting the expected mauling from Washington hawks. Worst hit was US aero-engine maker Pratt & Whitney's Canadian arm, which on Tuesday was told it had lost a €2.5bn (£1.8bn) contract with Airbus to a European consortium that had originally named a higher price. United Technologies (UTC), Pratt's parent company, claimed political interference was to blame. US companies were also threatened with a $4bn sanctions package by the European Commission yesterday, in the biggest trade dispute to hit the World Trade Organisation. The Commission told the US to repeal the Foreign Sales Corporations provision - which gives tax breaks to big exporters such as Microsoft and Boeing - or face the biggest retaliation package in WTO history. As if this was not enough, General Electric - which had its proposed acquisition of Honeywell vetoed by Brussels in 2001 - appears to be heading for a similar showdown over a takeover bid for Instrumentarium, a Finnish medical equipment company. US observers fear GE is losing out as Brussels pays more attention to lobbying from European rivals, such as Philips and Siemens. Such suspicions are hard to prove. But all three cases bear similarities to the type of obstruction many European companies feared from the US following their governments' lack of support during the Iraq war. news.ft.com