I learned that Boeing is going to move 2000 skilled jobs away from Washington state, despite just receiving $8.7 billion (with a B) in subsidies for the years 2025-2040. Really, I’m speechless. “Chutzpah” is one of the more printable words I can think of to describe this.

You will recall that the state’s legislators were angry when their $2 billion (present value of $3.2 billion over 20 years) 2003 subsidy for the Dreamliner did not stop Boeing from putting a Dreamliner assembly line in South Carolina. So the 2013 subsidy was supposed to guarantee that Boeing couldn’t do this again.

Boeing’s response no doubt will be that these jobs are in the Defense division, not in civil aircraft. Thus they are not covered by either the 2003 or the 2013 subsidy. This has already been hinted at by a commenter on the Business Week article, wraiths13@yahoo.com. This is true, but cold comfort: It’s still a reduction of Boeing’s footprint in Washington.

Let’s take a similar example in North Carolina. In May 2010, American Express announced that it was building a $400 million, 50- to 150-job, data center in Greensboro, without incentives. Why would it not want incentives? Take a guess.

Here’s mine, which seems to be pretty widely shared: American Express already knew that it was going to close its call center in Greensboro, at the cost of 1900 jobs, which it announced in January 2011. Thus, it would have been subject to clawbacks of any incentives it received for the data center, so why bother negotiating for incentives it couldn’t keep?

What American Express knew it couldn’t do in North Carolina is exactly what Boeing is now doing in Washington. This suggests the Washington has weaker job creation requirements than North Carolina, which ties subsidies to the total number of jobs in the state, not just at one location. So Washington has combined the nation’s largest-ever subsidy with weak performance requirements. Meanwhile, Boeing has done nothing to earn the benefit of the doubt regarding its motives. This is just one more indication that the company will try to find a way to worm its way out of commitments directly covered by the incentive packages. When that happens, try not to act surprised.

Cross-posted from Middle Class Political Economist.