This morning Kevin Drum characterized the alternatives on the Dubai Ports World deal:
- The full House and Senate concur and then George Bush backs down from his promise to veto any attempt to kill the deal. This could be facilitated by some kind of “new information” that Bush claims to have been previously unaware of.
- Bush vetoes the bill and Congress overrides. Bush is humiliated.
- Congressional leaders manage to fudge the issue in such a way that Bush can sign the bill while still pretending to stick to his guns. Since Dems will fight this, Republicans would have to be almost 100% united to pull it off.
Like good business school graduates the managers of DPW have responded to what appeared to be a losing situation by changing the rules:
WASHINGTON – A Dubai-owned company said Thursday it is giving up its management stake in some U.S. ports, a move made as congressional leaders warned President Bush that both the House and Senate appeared ready to block the takeover.
It was not immediately clear whether the announcement would be enough to cool widespread sentiment in Congress to pass legislation blocking the deal, which has become a burdensome election-year problem for Republicans.
Sen. John Warner, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, took the Senate floor to read to colleagues a company press release disclosing its new stance.
“Because of the strong relationship between the United Arab Emirates and the United States and to preserve that relationship, DP World has decided to transfer fully the U.S. operation of P&O Operations North America to a United States entity,” DP World’s chief operating officer, Edward H. Bilkey, said in the statement that Warner relayed to other senators. The announcement did not specify which American company would be involved.
My guess is that the “United States entity†will be an arms-length subsidiary of DPW which is what quite a number of people have been suggesting for some time now as a means of mitigating whatever risks DPW might pose. Other alternatives include a U. S. subsidiary of another foreign operator or one of the relatively few remaining qualified U. S. candidates (most such have already been sold to foreign operators).
