The Bush administration mind-set that it is always right and everyone else is wrong unfortunately extends all too often into the trade arena.

Its very aggressive foreign policy and its determination to rattle cages sees it forever living on the edge.

It doesn't always seem to appreciate there is more than one way of skinning a cat.

Politically, I was all for them sorting out Afghanistan following 9/11 and I was quite happy with them getting rid of Saddam Hussein.

It wouldn't bother me if they got shot of a few more nasty dictators - like Robert Mugabe, for example.

Yet he isn't even on the Yanks' radar.

I'm not keen on the mad mullahs of Iran getting the atomic bomb but then even I would be edgy about the US doing an Iraq on them.

As for those Far East little bits of local difficulty - let China have Taiwan back in exchange for them sorting out North Korea.

With so much on his plate, you wouldn't think it was a good idea for Bush to get all aggressive with his friends on trade issues. But he just doesn't seem to see it.

Hence the mud is flying yet again on the issue of aircraft building subsidies.

Talks between Brussels and Washington to resolve the dispute over Airbus Industrie and Boeing have hit turbulence yet again, with both sides again threatening a damaging legal clash at the World Trade Organisation.

It was the US which started this one - basically a put-up job by Boeing, stung by Airbus building more planes than them.

The two agreed in January to avoid a bruising battle at the WTO and negotiate by April 11 a phase-out of subsidies to develop commercial aircraft. But with three weeks left and little progress to date, mutual recriminations have begun.

The trouble with the Americans is that they can clearly see the European subsidies but then turn a blind eye to their own.

The US lodged a complaint against EU subsidies to Airbus with the WTO in October, which brought a counteraction from Brussels against what it termed indirect US government aid for Boeing.

But I predict the Bush administration will regret falling for the Boeing bluster when the 1992 bilateral accord that set the terms of assistance to aircraft makers was actually working OK.

The two sides have agreed to freeze subsidies while they negotiate a new agreement.

But will there ever be one - they have been talking off and on for a decade on commercial airline rights to their respective airports without success.

One suspects that the new Airbus A350 and Boeing's 787 Dreamliner will be in flight before a deal is even close.

Part of the difficulties in the negotiations is that Europe is trying to reach agreement on two issues that were not included as part of the January agreement: Japanese aid for development of the 787 and the Foreign Sales Corporations that US companies use to lower their taxes.

If it had any sense the US would simply cut its losses and back off.

Sadly it only seems to understand showdowns at the OK Corral.