UAE in US ports … Where one embarks. 10th of March, 2006 ANTE·MERIDIEM 12:11

Apparently the US administration is getting criticism from Republicans for its support for the ownership of several US ports passing to the UAE:

http://​www.​sueddeutsche.​de/​,tt2m3/​ausland/​artikel/​708/​71637/​

For once, this is something on which I agree with Bush and disagree with his critics. I think greater economic integration across the world is a good thing. The more investment from Taiwan that goes into Mainland China, the greater the economic harm to the People’s Republic if it rattles sabres too energetically and Taiwan moves its investment to India; the more investment from Finland and the rest of the EU that goes into Estonia, the more tighter Estonia is integrated into the EU, the greater the potential harm to Russia if it does its normal Russia-threaten-the-neighbours thing.

And unless both sides in a multinational transaction are equally open to such a possibility—A would have no more trouble with B investing in A than it would with A investing in B—then there are legitimate grounds for B refusing the investment of A. And in such a case, assets for sale in B will be sold for a lower price to people who have less interest in making optimal use of them (they haven’t paid much, they’re not risking much); ditto assets for sale in A, though where A is the US and B is the UAE, this effect will be masked by the much greater internal market size of A.

And this is worrying to me:

„Immerhin jeder vierte US-Bürger sagt sogar, er sei gegen den Verkauf jeder US-Firma an Ausländer.“ 

So one in four US citizens is against selling any US firm to foreigners? If US politicians play to that sort of tribalism, then asset and firm prices in the US will fall, and the US economy will tank some more. This will be a problem both for the US and for those parts of the world that have significant business dealings therewith; that is, the whole industrialised world.

Word of the day: „das Kai“ , German for Quay (like lots of German nautical terms, it’s from Platt or Dutch and close to the English word); el embarcadero,  as in the San Francisco neighbourhood, is one Spanish word for the same thing. No Tajik today, though I’m certain a Persian word for the concept exists.