If having a weak currency is an advantage, he should run his budget in French Francs.
It's hard to see that happening either. I believe VW just had to guarantee 10 years of job security just so their people will work more hours per week -- up to about 33 hours now. Airbus will probably lower their weekly hours, lowering actual paycheck outlay. But they still have to pay the same benefits per person, costing a lot more than layoffs for the same number of hours worked.
In the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, one of the themes that the left put out in large quantities in media venues around the world was that Middle East oil nations would switch to the Euro and the Euro would rise in value, eclipsing the dollar, and that rising Euro would ruin the US economy.
As I tried to tell them, the artificial rising of the Euro would saddle Europe with industrial goods they could not export, against lower-priced American goods.
And, that is what happened.
I wonder if they complained when they had to pay the late penalties in dollars, and I wonder if the airlines complain when they have to buy oil in dollars.
To Euro-peons, bad stuff is always someone else's fault, and fixing it is always someone else's responsibility.
So, Airbus' troubles are not an uncompetitive product mix or serious market missteps... it's that bogeyman of all socialists, Bush.
But actually, they have a point. The "weak" dollar was actually one of the more brilliant economic moves Bush has made. By bringing the dollar back closer to historic norms with respect to world currencies (versus its artificially inflated "strength" during the preceding decade), our export economy got a much-needed jump-start, after two decades of withering from Clintonian exchange-rate mismanagement and the assaults of NAFTA, GATT and so on. Europe was caught flat-footed. Unfortunately the Chinese yuan still mostly pegged to the U.S. dollar, so its export economy is benefiting too.
But all in all, Airbus' trouble is a product line that misses the market. One example: the A350 is a lovely bird, one of the prettiest in the sky and a solid machine with a good safety record, but it's a quad-jet competing against the sublime Boeing 777, a much-more-efficient twinjet, and the new 787 dreamliner, also a twinjet and super-ultra-efficient. Meanwhile Airbus put all its eggs in the A380's basket... the Edsel of the air.