The U.S. and EU could break their tariff truce over a record-breaking $3.4 billion Airbus loan and a reignited 17-year dispute between aviation giants

The Trump administration is warning Europe that a $3.4 billion loan to Airbus could blow up the truce that ended the longest-running fight in WTO history, and put the broader U.S.-EU trade deal in the line of fire.

U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) Jamieson Greer has pressed the EU for more information regarding the $3.4 billion loan its lending arm, the European Investment Bank (EIB), made to Airbus in June, according to a statement Greer released Oct. 26. Greer said his office still has no details on what he called the bank’s “largest loan ever,” and warned it risks the “violation of the terms of our hard-won [Large Civil Aircraft] deal,” referring to the 2021 truce that paused tariffs on roughly $11.5 billion of goods. That truce was extended in July after the European Parliament approved the broader 15% tariff deal, so a fight over one Airbus loan could put both deals in play.

“There’s no way Europe backs away from this one. Airbus is real. It’s not a little sideshow,” Marc Busch, a professor of international business diplomacy at Georgetown University, told Fortune.

U.S. aircraft manufacturer Boeing requested the government press Airbus for transparency on the loan back in July, Reuters first reported. There was speculation at the time that Airbus was using the influx of cash to develop a new jet model.

“I had sincerely hoped that trade-distorting........

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