That free trade agreement with Oman in the House just passed?

[Skidmore]

Did I understand that correctly?

[adriennui]

1. oman will be buying into our ports

this was probably a technicality to make it possible.

did any read the obit of the ceo of dubai ports worl....dies in his sleep at 72 years. seems kind of serendipitous.

[MH1]

3. red herring, by those who are adamantly opposed?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/18/AR2006071801195_pf.html

The U.S. Trade Representative's office acknowledged the Oman pact could allow an Omani company to perform such "landside" port functions as operation and maintenance of docks, loading and unloading of vessels and ship cleaning.

But all U.S. trade agreements include an "essential security" article that allows the president to block any business deal the United States believes raises security concerns, according to a USTR fact sheet.

The Congressional Research Service also said on Tuesday it was unlikely Dubai Ports World or any company would be able to establish a shell company in Oman under the pact in order to acquire U.S. port operations.

CRS is considered solidly non-partisan, as far as I know.

[Mojorabbit]

4. Well if the president has the final say......that

eases my mind, not.

[RB TexLa]

2. oh yes we sure don't want free trade and better relations

with moderate arab nations, do we.

If one of them likes us and wants to do business with us we should just slam the door in their face and give them Iran's phone number.

:banghead:

[RaleighNCDUer]

5. Hey, I've got plenty of friends

but I don't give them the keys to my apartment.

These little autocracies do not have our interests in mind. And things can change, sometimes with the replacement of a single person in these governments. Our friends this week may be bitter enemies next week. Why would we entrust our national security to their transient good will?

If they want to buy office buildings in Chicago, fine. If they want to own the Minnesota Vikings, great. If they want to be controlling both ends of a shipping system that brings uninspected freight containers into US ports -- there I've got a problem.

[RB TexLa]

7. So England and Oman are our friends but

one's companies can do business at our ports and the other can not?

Funny no one ever mentioned anything about "foreign" companies doing port operations here until...

[RaleighNCDUer]

13. I, for one, never suspected that non-American companies ran

any of our ports. The very idea is akin to having only Canadians at the border controls to our north, and only Mexicans on the southern borders. The Canadian and Mexicans are our friends, but they have their border controls, and we have ours.

I don't see how you cannot get that.

And, btw, I don't like England being in control of our ports, either. However, England didn't have members of the royal family visiting with Osama the month before 9/11.

I don't see how you cannot get that.

Maybe you think that it's all business - that it isn't governments, but corporations. Well, corporations don't give a damn about US security. It's all about the bottom line for the top guys. If they can increase profits by cutting back on shipping inspections, they'll do it.

I don't see how you cannot get that.

The end result could, seriously, be a nuke sailing into New York harbor.

I don't see how you cannot get that.

[Skidmore]

6. We want fair trade. And we want the sovereignty of our ports.

Trade is fine. Just fair. And sovereignty of our ports. What's hard about that.

[RB TexLa]

8. The ownership of a company operating a port does nothing to sovereignty

wasn't stormfront the ones who started tha talking points on "sovereignty?"

[Elwood P Dowd]

9. My God are you totally lost!

OFTA will increase instability in the Middle East. The abuse and marginalization of guest workers in countries such as Oman presents a key challenge for the security of this vital region and of the United States. James Zogby of the Arab-American Institute has referred to the situation as a "time bomb." The climate of anger and alienation created by the current situation facing guest workers is just the type of environment in which radical Islamic groups thrive. It is profoundly disturbing that Congress would consider implementing a free-trade agreement that will exacerbate conditions that are likely to breed a reaction which could further threaten security in the Middle East. Have you seen the film Syriana? Those horrible conditions, creating that despair is what OFTA could well do.

OFTA could undermine U.S. national security. The OFTA goes beyond even CAFTA and NAFTA in explicitly promoting rights for foreign companies — including government-owned companies — to operate our sensitive infrastructure: electricity grids, port operations and more. OFTA allows foreign investors to take the U.S. government to secret tribunals if the profitability of any foreign investment in these sensitive sectors is threatened by an act of the U.S. Congress! Under OFTA, if Dubai Ports World (DPW) set up shop in Oman and Congress acted to halt that company's acquisition of US port operations, OFTA would allow DPW to drag the United States before an international tribunal and demand payment of million of our tax dollars to compensate for "future lost profits" caused by the foreign company being denied their OFTA foreign investor rights to operate in our country.

More NAFTAs mean more lost U.S. jobs. A decade of NAFTA has resulted in the largest U.S. trade deficit ever — a deficit caused by a flood of job-killing imported goods and the export of 3 million U.S. manufacturing jobs. Our wages are little above their 1972 levels even as prices and productivity have risen. We can't afford any more NAFTA-like trade deals. We need to change this broken trade mod

[RB TexLa]

10. Not lost at all My God!

All trade agreements have procedures to protect investment against punitive political actions.

[Elwood P Dowd]

11. OFTA is NOT a free trade agreement

NAFTA is NOT a free trade agreement. CAFTA is NOT a free trade agreement.

These are all outsourcing scams. Fire your American worker making $15.00 an hour, close the factory, and move overseas where you can employ slaves with zero benefits or labor protections and avoid strict US labor and environmental laws. David Ricardo would never consider these scams free trade agreements.

Every single one of these fake free trade agreements has been total failure.

[Elwood P Dowd]

12. What a nice little country

The OFTA would provide special access to U.S. markets for clothes made in sweatshops located in Oman — meaning more indentured workers will be trafficked from Bangladesh, China and other countries to slave away in Omani sweatshops, and more jobs will be lost here at home. OFTA is bad for the Middle East, and it is bad for the United States.

OFTA will lead to serious human rights abuses. The majority of the workers in Oman's private sector are foreign-born "guest workers" from China, Bangladesh and other poor countries. Oman forbids independent unions. Only "committees" managed by employers and government are allowed. Seventy percent of Oman's private sector workforce is comprised of foreign guest workers, and only people with Arabic fluency can serve as officers even in the fake unions. This means most workers would have no way to fight even the horrific sorts of abuses we learned about from this recent New York Times exposé that were caused by the U.S.-Jordan FTA — a pact and a country with better labor standards. Ways and Means Democrats worked for months to get fixes for Oman's laws that make a mockery of ILO standards. The Sultan refused. Then, as it has become clear the agreement is in trouble, last week he issued a new "Sultanic Decree" — which does nothing. Worse, in 2006 for the first time, the State Department placed Oman on its watch list of countries that traffic in human beings — both because of children sold into slavery from Sudan that toil as jockeys in the camel racing industry, and due to the widespread problems of indentured guest workers