Dubai Deal Dead

That's the headline all over the place. The company agreed to transfer the rights to the US ports to a US entity.

What do you think the political fallout is going to be?

 

I think its pretty obvious. Republicans essentially killed the deal in the house; so they'll get blamed for xenophobia or something. Bad information and fear mongering when it first came out really killed this thing. The administration did its usual bang up job of standing up for something they believed in.

Dumping the deal made no sense at all. Didn't the USA today report that like 80% of the ports are controlled by foreign owned businesses? From what I understand, this same company has the same deal with ports all over the east coast.

 

I just pray they keep helping us catch terrorist. Pretty bad to crap on your freinds for a soundbite.

 

Political fallout? There will not be much of any. Pollsters found American people just saw red when they saw Arab. This was politics of ignorance. For craps sake, Israel thinks the Arab company is first rate!

 

About time congess gets off their lazy butts and does what the tax payers want. There is no need for this company to run our ports.

 

The keyword in that sentence is TRANSFER. Forbes just ran an article saying the UAE is still the likely owner of the ports, but had simply transferred the rights to an American company which acts as their subsidiary.

Basically, Bush made a backroom deal with the UAE. Americans shouldn't be surprised because Bill Clinton let the Chinese have the largest deep water port in southern California in the late 1990s.

The plan is simple. Turn over all the infrastructure in the United States to foreign corporations. Go look in the dictionary, it is defined as FASCISM. But don't believe me. Check out this article from Forbes.com



Bye-Bye Dubai?
David A. Andelman and Jessica Holzer 03.09.06, 2:56 PM ET

New York -

In what could be a last-ditch effort to salvage its deal to operate East and Gulf Coast ports in the U.S., DP World told Congress that it would agree to transfer control to a "U.S. entity," which could simply mean a subsidiary of the Dubai operation.

In a statement, first read on the floor of the U.S. Senate by Virginia Republican John Warner, DP World said the decision was made to "preserve the strong relationship between the U.S. and the U.A.E." But in fact, it sounded suspiciously like a device carefully crafted by DP World's huge team of lobbyists and lawyers to salvage the deal in some fashion.

The new entity is supposed to have an American board and American managers, but the ownership was still questionable. Or, as New York's Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer observed, "the devil is in the details." If DP World is in fact merely planning to put its U.S. assets under a U.S.-managed subsidiary with oversight from a U.S.-staffed board, it would be following in a long line of foreign suppliers of defense technology to the U.S.

"This looks like a variant of that," says Clyde Prestowitz of the Economic Strategy Group in Washington.

But many experts argue that DP World doesn't threaten national security and that requiring the company to jump through so many hoops sends a bad message.

"I think it's a very negative signal we're sending to the world," says Nouriel Roubini of Roubini Global Economics Monitor. The U.S. needs roughly $900 billion in investment this year to fund its gaping current-account deficit. And investors are increasingly interested in owning real assets rather than stocks and bonds, according to Roubini. "We don't have the luxury to snub the world," he says.

There is the further risk that the compromise setup may not be enough to cool the fury over the deal on Capitol Hill. After all, House lawmakers wanted to torpedo it without even waiting for the results of a 45-day investigation that DP World had accepted. Congress is well within its power to go ahead and force DP World to divest its U.S. assets, according to Barry Carter, an international law expert at Georgetown Law Center. If it is framed correctly, "that law will be upheld," he says.

Still, there were reports that several major private-equity firms were sniffing around the unit, which had been part of London-based Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation, which DP World officially acquired earlier this week for $6.8 billion after a London court cleared the way for the takeover.

Indeed, the decision to proceed with the larger P&O takeover, which gives DP World a broad spectrum of ports outside the U.S., left in limbo the question of who is now operating the U.S. port facilities and to whom they are answerable.

The statement by Warner, followed minutes later by an official confirmation from DP World, seemed designed to defuse an explosive confrontation between the White House and the Republican-controlled Senate and House.

On Wednesday night, a House Committee voted 62-2 to block the transfer of the U.S. ports' operations to DP World. President George W. Bush was reportedly told this morning that there were enough votes in both the House and Senate for a measure to block the deal--a law that the president had threatened to veto.

 

They already operate a port in Miami dumbass!

 

I was saddened to see this deal fall through due to political pressure of the lowest sort.

America is great because we are a melting pot of all of the worlds cultures. We are the best and the brightest from all over the world.

We lessen ourselves when we exclude others due to protectionism.