According to the U.S., what constitutes as fair subsidies?

Question

The U.S. asked China to do this during the trade negotiations:

China immediately will cease providing market-distorting subsidies and other types of government support that can contribute to the creation or maintenance of excess capacity in the industries targeted by the Made in China 2025 industrial plan;

However, why does the U.S. think it's unfair? And also what would constitute fair subsidies since the U.S. is known to give massive subsidies to companies like Boeing and Ford? Is it me or were logic and fairness thrown completely out of the window during the U.S. trade negotiations?

Answer 1

China has a lot of problems protecting companies' trade secrets and sometimes providing globally-agreed-unfair subsidies.

A country should subsidize a company or industry temporarily to provide a niche to grow. However, this should not make the market uncompetitive.

There is no clear answer, but if government subsidy favors a company and makes it almost impossible for anyone in the industry to compete then it would be considered unfair.

Ex. Providing a company subsidy to develop a 5G network. This is good since there is no outstanding infrastructure. This promotes innovation and opens up a field to compete in.

Ex. Providing a company subsidy to weed out international competitors for the sake of promoting national companies. This drives down the competition and is considered bad.