Boeing-Airbus subsidy parallel

Used to illustrate that foreign-government backing of integrated steel mills is part of a broader pattern. Boeing's defense contracts (~50%) are an indirect US subsidy; Airbus is directly subsidized; both governments deny their own.

When they first started continuous casting in the 1960s, a lot of people said that process will never work. Some people said going from 65 percent yield — pounds of steel produced per hundred pounds cast — to 97 percent is a big enough increase in profitability that they were willing to bite the bullet and do it. American steel companies were too conservative. Boards of directors were not willing to take a risk. It was people who were willing to take a risk, but some of those people were in foreign countries where the government was backing up their risk. It's sort of like the Airbus-Boeing controversy today — how much is the government supporting both of them.