Lame indeed. If you can't deliver the product you promised in the time frame guaranteed, you can always blame the Americans (weak dollar). I was skeptical when I read where a Boeing executive stated that Airbus was now a decade behind Boeing. After reading Airbus' excuses, I'm inclined to agree with Boeing.
Didn't we read on another Airbus thread that Airbus was pricing their products in dollars? If so, wouldn't they be doing this to compensate for their stronger currency? Or wouldn't that matter?
A strong Euro means that European consumers can buy imported goods less expensively. However, it makes manufacturing items in Europe more expensive.
China has purposefully kept the value of their currency low and a fixed proportion of the dollar for this very reason.
They do not want Chinese people importing foreign goods. They want to fullfill domestic needs internally, and have cheap labor that is forced to buy domestically.
When taken to the extreme that China has, deflated currency harms workers.
However, having the dollar a bit weak compared to the Euro helps grow our economy, and hurts Europe's. It's more expensive for American consumers to buy European goods or visit Europe, but for most Americans it doesn't have a large impact.
Increased imports does appear to be having a significant impact on our economy.
I really don't understand why the Euro is so strong right now, but it's really restricting their economy which is experiencing near stagnation. With the hit Airbus is taking, they very well may be headed for a recession if not a depression.
Airbus is large enough to be a significant portion of the European economy, and since they provide such a strong safety net for workers, unemployment increases drag on their economy even more than on ours.
Europe needs to face reality soon and figure out that their socialist dreamland is crumbling under it's own weight. They either need to address some of the problems of their implementation of socialism, or they are in for some very bad economic times.
Not because they don't have skilled workers. Not because they don't have the capability of producing quality products.
Their problem is that their system simply has too much dead weight, and they insist on providing very well for that dead weight so that it is dragging down the majority.