WTO raps U.S. subsidies to Boeing

The banned aid included $2.6 billion of research funding from space agency NASA. But a WTO verdict sparked an immediate row over whether trade judges were right to include more than $2 billion of further support on the charge sheet against Boeing.

The ruling is the latest chapter in a six-year battle between the industry's two giants. The spat has already entered the record books as the world's largest and costliest trade dispute.

The WTO verdict backs some, but not all, of a tit-for-tat legal case over Boeing aid brought by the European Union.

A separate WTO trade panel condemned European support for Boeing rival Airbus in a parallel case last year.

As so often in a row which now extends to 2,000 pages of complex trade court rulings, both sides claimed victory.