DP World is owned by the government of Dubai, which is, in turn, “one of seven emirates that form the federation known as the United Arab Emirates.” This state-owned corporation will soon be operating port facilities in Philadelphia, Baltimore, Miami, New Orleans and Newark, N.J. The deal embroils politicians—ours and theirs—in the usual tangled and tainted interests.
For instance, after Katrina struck, the UAE gave the U.S. government 100 million for disaster relief. Talks about the ports began shortly afterwards. Quid pro quo? CorpWatch alludes to an intricate web of war profiteers. Like Halliburton and other well-connected American companies, the Dubai conglomerate “does brisk war business.”
Tracing the slimy trail of the Bush administration and its corporate cronies reveals that Treasury Secretary John Snow “was chairman of the CSX rail firm that sold its own international port operations to DP World for $1.15 billion in 2004.” Another edifying tidbit from the New York Daily News has it that “David Sanborn, who runs DP World’s European and Latin American operations…was tapped by Bush last month to head the U.S. Maritime Administration.”
Also, former Congressman Vin Weber, a Minnesota Republican, is a consultant to the United Arab Emirates; and former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole is a “fixture” at Alston & Bird LLP—a company that’ll be consulting and lobbying privately for DP World. Bling-bling (as in the sound of a cash register, not a rapper’s accoutrements)!
If U.S. ports were private, and not state run; if the deal were devoid of the cupidity and corruption that comes with government “enterprise”—all those politicized paybacks—then it is more than likely that the private property owners involved would react just as Americans have reacted to the involvement of a Middle-Eastern, state-owned company in the management of their ports. Most Americans are against this deal; only 17 percent approve.
If ports were privately owned, their proprietors would have to underwrite the endeavor and would thus be extra cautious, since it would fall to them—and not to taxpayers—to cover the costs of an attack. There’s no doubt that port owners would then express the same trepidations most Americans are now voicing over who manages—and has easy access to—their ports. Why, in a free market, even the perception of insecurity would cause insurance costs to skyrocket. Fairness doesn’t factor into this.
In all likelihood, if ports were privatized, we’d be witnessing a similar reaction. Right or wrong, the UAE would probably not be doing a rip-roaring trade in managing ports. So, to the extent that popular response to the Dubai deal mirrors what would transpire under private property, it’s neither unethical nor unreasonable; it is what it is.
When the issue at stake is near and dear to their hearts, people become propertarians.
* Related Reading: Whose Property is it Anyway?