WHAT ABOUT THE STEEL TARIFFS?:

Mideast Building Trade Ties With U.S. (Evelyn Iritani, March 28, 2005, LA Times)

In Morocco and across the Middle East, freer trade is gaining traction.

Eager for more business with America, the region's governments are slashing tariffs, reducing red tape and strengthening intellectual property laws and labor protections. These measures are boosting trade in textiles and apparel, farm goods and machinery. California farmers stand to benefit; Hollywood might find places like Morocco more attractive for film shoots.

A flurry of activity is exactly what the Bush administration hoped for two years ago when it unveiled an ambitious proposal to create a Middle East Free Trade Area within a decade.

The plan: to negotiate a series of trade agreements that would eventually fuse one of the world's most economically and politically unstable regions into a giant free-trade zone.

President Bush described the initiative as part of a larger effort to bring the Middle East into "an expanding circle of opportunity" by using free markets and trade to "defeat poverty" and teach "the habits of liberty."

Since then, the Bush administration has negotiated trade pacts with Bahrain and Morocco, and this month launched negotiations with the United Arab Emirates and Oman. Congress has yet to approve the Bahrain deal.

The U.S. also signed a deal with Egypt that created industrial zones in which goods produced with Israeli components could be exported to the U.S. duty-free. The U.S. already had trade pacts with Jordan and Israel. The Palestinian Authority is included in the Israeli agreement.

The Middle Eastern effort fits into a broader Bush administration plan to strike bilateral trade deals across the globe.

If you didn't know better you'd swear they'd been following overarching and consistent trade and democratization policies...

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 28, 2005 7:47 AM