What's the opposite of "paranoia and isolationism"?

Posted by Joshua Holland at 10:35 AM on February 24, 2006.

As I said on Wednesday, this Dubai ports deal isn't a security issue. It's about crony capitalism and the way our government does business (or, just as accurately, how our company does governance). More importantly, it points to how precariously our economy is balanced, gutted of manufacturing capacity and indebted up to its ears.

I don't know whether the contract in question was the best one out there. We know that there are connections between the Whitehouse and Dubai through the Carlyle Group and through two senior Whitehouse officials. And George's requisite embarrassing brother, Neil Bush -- you can't be President without one -- got funding from the same Dubai investors for one of his dubious schemes business endeavors.

We also know that former Senate Minority Leader Bob "I Fought in WW Two!" Dole has been leading the K Street lobbying effort on behalf of the Emirate. From CNN:

LOU DOBBS: The United Arab Emirates not only has friends in high places in government, it also has high-powered lobbying connections. This oil- rich nation has been lavishing hundreds of thousands of dollars on K Street, lobbying friends to push its point of view and its goals.

LISA SYLVESTER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): To deflate criticism, Dubai Ports World has gone on a hiring spree. The bipartisan lobbying firm headed by former congressman Tom Downey and Ray McGrath was hired last week.

Senator Bob Dole and the lobbying firm he works for, Alston & Bird, also got a call. DPW, owned by a member of the United Arab Emirates, is pushing hard to keep Congress from blocking the deal.

TED BILKEY, COO, DUBAI PORTS WORLD: We're going to do anything possible to be sure that this deal goes through. […]

SYLVESTER: But lobbying Congress is not new for the United Arab Emirates. The country has a team of U.S. lobbyists representing its interests.

Records filed with the Department of Justices Foreign Registration Office show the UAE paid at least four lobbying firms more than $720,000 last year. According to Senate disclosure records, the Dubai Chamber of Commerce spent at least $100,000 lobbying Capitol Hill in the first half of last year.

But all that's old news. Crony capitalism is the right's little black dress -- ubiquitous and always in style.

What I find more interesting is the way this story brings into sharp relief the hollowing-out of the American economy. Deep in a WaPo article about port security, we learn that this isn't about a UAE firm managing "our ports." Most of our major ports are in fact owned "by Asian and European shipping giants." They're not our ports after all.

On that larger issue, David Ignatius has a piece today which is worth quoting at length:

The real absurdity here is that Congress doesn't seem to realize that an Arab-owned company's management of America's ports is just a taste of what is coming. Greater foreign ownership of U.S. assets is an inevitable consequence of the reckless tax-cutting, deficit-ballooning fiscal policies that Congress and the White House have pursued. By encouraging the United States to consume more than it produces, these fiscal policies have sucked in imports so fast that the nation is nearing a trillion-dollar annual trade deficit. Those are IOUs on America's future, issued by a spendthrift Congress.

The best quick analysis I've seen of the fiscal squeeze comes from New York University professor Nouriel Roubini … He notes that with the U.S. current account deficit running at about $900 billion in 2006, "in a matter of a few years foreigners may end up owning most of the U.S. capital stocks: ports, factories, corporations, land, real estate and even our national parks." Until recently, he writes, the United States has been financing its trade deficit through debt -- namely, by selling U.S. Treasury securities to foreign central banks…

But as Roubini says, foreigners may decide they would rather hold their dollars in equity investments than in U.S. Treasury debt. "If we continue with our current patterns of spending above our incomes, by 2013 the U.S. foreign liabilities could be as high as 75 percent of GDP and an increasing fraction of such liabilities will be in the form of equity," he explains. "So, let us stop whining about the dangers of unfriendly foreigners owning our firms and assets and get used to it."

Looking critically at our consumption and debt-driven "growth" of recent years is deeply politically incorrect. Nobody wants to touch that hot potato. As Ignatius puts it, "it would mean financial sacrifice on the part of Congress and the American people." That's not gonna happen, absent a very hard landing.

Just to drive home the point, let me highlight one other story today from the AP:

Orders to U.S. factories for big-ticket manufactured goods fell by the largest amount in 5 1/2 years in January as demand for commercial aircraft suffered the biggest setback in seven years, the government reported Friday.

The Commerce Department said that orders for durable goods, everything from computers to cars, fell by 10.2 percent last month, a much bigger decline than had been expected.

The weakness was led by a 68.2 percent drop in orders for commercial aircraft reflecting a falloff in sales at Boeing Corp. after two very strong months. Analysts said the overall decline overstated the weakness in manufacturing because it was so heavily influenced by the volatile aircraft sector.

Excluding airplanes, cars and other transportation products, orders posted a solid 0.6 percent rise after an even larger 1.9 percent increase in December.

Lost in the discussion of our manufacturing sector -- whether it's creeping up or down -- is its increasing concentration into just a few dominant products, especially aerospace and weapons. Overall, the U.S. had a $44 billion dollar trade deficit in "advanced technology products" in 2005, up 20 percent from the year before. In 1997, we had a $33 billion dollar surplus in high-tech gizmos, according to the The Economic Policy Institute.

And hi-tech R and D follows manufacturing. That's the fatal flaw with the neolibs' argument that we can outsource manufacturing and stay on top with cutting edge technology. Once you stop producing things, you lose that technological edge as well.

So, as the man said, if foreign ownership troubles you, you better get used to it.

Joshua Holland is a staff writer at Alternet and a regular contributor to The Gadflyer.