The English language offers a rich vocabulary for expressing the notion of subsidy. Familiarization with these synonyms is useful both for understanding the rhetoric of subsidies and for conducting literature and data searches.
State aids is the term used within the European Union for subsidies provided by its Member States. It is used also by some U.S. states. "Aid" by itself, because of its common association with foreign aid, is used less frequently than in the past to mean a domestic subsidy. Industry assistance is a more general term than subsidy, and can include low-cost general services, such as advice to small businesses on how to fill in their tax forms. Lawmakers like speaking of aid or assistance because the terms are subtly suggestive of short-term help or relief, even though the programmes involved may be long-running.
The word "support" has a precise meaning within the trade-policy community. The OECD, for example, refers to support when discussing its aggregate of subsidies and transfers to producers created through artificially high prices (i.e., market price support), the producer support equivalent, or PSE. Domestic support and aggregate measure of support are terms used in reference to obligations under the WTO's Agreement on Agriculture.
In the political sphere, however, "support" is highly imprecise. When a government declares it "supports" a particular technology, industry, or sector, that "support" can mean anything from simple well wishes to suitcases of money.
Perhaps the most ambiguous euphemism for "subsidy" is incentive. That is because an incentive can be positive or negative. For example, use of a relatively clean form of energy can be stimulated either by a tax on more-polluting forms of energy, or through a subsidy to consumers of the cleaner energy. The budgetary implications of the two forms of incentive could not be more different.
