President Obama confronts two critical challenges that will shape the success of his presidency: revitalizing the economy and protecting Americans from corporate irresponsibility.  These two issues converge in one of today’s most heated public policy debates: the fight over the Air Force’s new $35 billion aerial refueling tanker program.

Airborne refueling tankers are the linchpin of America’s air supremacy, allowing pilots to deliver critical supplies and to provide cover to our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan the instant they need it.  The current tanker fleet was built when the medium of television was in its infancy.  As important as tankers are to our military, most of the planes are older than the pilots who fly them.

Consistent with our federal competition in contracting laws, the Air Force has invited a foreign company—France’s Airbus—to compete for the tanker deal.  Airbus is in the running for this contract despite its checkered past of dealing arms to countries like Iran, of bribing government officials abroad, and of using European Union-provided subsidies to undermine the U.S. aerospace industry and filch as many as 65,000 American jobs.

In the largest case ever before the World Trade Organization, the Bush administration brought suit against the French company to stop the subsidies.  President Obama’s trade representative, former Dallas Mayor Ron Kirk, closed the deal in September, when the World Trade Organization ruled the subsidies to Airbus are illegal. 

But Airbus still intends to offer a tanker based on a commercial aircraft that was financed by $5 billion of these same subsidies.  So far, the Pentagon hasn’t cried foul; 44,000 jobs are at stake with the tanker award.

To many, the idea that one arm of the U.S. government would sue Airbus while another would consider awarding them a prestigious contract might seem a tad puzzling.   Equally strange, some Airbus supporters in Congress have suggested forgoing the competition and splitting the tanker contract between Airbus and their American competitor, Boeing.  Splitting the contract and allowing Airbus to keep its illegal subsidies is like telling a thief that he can keep what he stole from your house because convicting him in a court of law would be too much trouble.

Split buys always cost the taxpayers more, and in the case of the tankers, it would ratchet up the price by $2 billion in each year of the contract.  In this case, a split buy would also put tens of thousands of American aerospace workers—including more than 3,000 here in Texas—on the unemployment line by sending their jobs overseas.

Federal contracting rules can’t prevent Airbus from competing for the tanker deal, nor should they.  That would be as wrong as France’s blacklisting of U.S. defense firms trying to get work with European defense agencies.

However, there is an easy fix that could make the principles of competition and fairness sing in harmony on the tanker deal.  In considering the offers from both American-based Boeing and Airbus, the Pentagon should discount the France-based company’s $5 billion dollars worth of illegal subsidies.   This would prevent Airbus from perpetuating U.S. job losses through illegal means.  That way, we can fairly gauge the cost of the two competing planes, ensure that we get the best product for the best price, and protect American workers from a foreign company that seems to always flout the rules.

Here in Texas, which exports more goods to other countries than any other state, we don’t take kindly to slack enforcement of trade rules. The nation shouldn’t, either.

While campaigning for president last year, then-Senator Obama said of the tanker deal, “…when we you’ve got such an enormous contract for such a vital piece of our U.S. military arsenal, it strikes me that we should have identified a U.S. company that could do it.”

But fair-minded people need not even go that far.

All that is needed is for the Pentagon to ensure a fair tanker competition by refusing to let Airbus benefit from its ill-gotten subsidies.   If President Obama does that, he could turn the tanker contract into a game changing double-play that will help achieve his twin goals of revitalizing the economy while assuring corporate accountability.

 

Rosa Rosales is national president of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC).