I think this is worth noting. The WH has to sell off America's hard assets to service the debt Bush has accrued.
......transcript:
Still ahead, how years of failed U.S. trade policies help set the stage for this deal. And a key national security giveaway. That special report is coming up.
And will that 45-day review change requested by the company in question, is it really a political maneuver? We'll have a debate from both sides of the Dubai ports deal. We'll find out what your Congress and mine is doing about it all.
Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
DOBBS: Americans shocked to learn that foreign governments could be running parts of major U.S. ports. But the Dubai Ports World deal is simply the latest example of what is amounting to nothing less than a sell-off of critical American assets. It's the inevitable result of decades of failed trade policies that has made -- has put billions of U.S. dollars in the hands of our trading partners.
Christine Romans has the report. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): America's broken trade policies, brokered by successive administrations and passed by Congress, come with a price.
KEVIN KEARNS, U.S. BUSINESS & INDUSTRY COUNCIL: We hemorrhaged $725 billion last year in our goods and services deficit. All this money is going overseas and the foreigners are spending -- taking it and spending it back here.
ROMANS: And he says those in Congress now calling the Dubai deal a security giveaway, well, they created the problem in the first place.
KEARNS: Let's not let them off the hook and let them reform CFIUS and then walk away from the much larger problem of what's going on in this economy, how it's being hollowed out, how foreigners are awash with dollars that they can only spend one place here. And they are spending them by gobbling up U.S. assets.
ROMANS: Our government promotes fiscal policies that mean we import more than we produce. The Treasury Department must finance that deficit by issuing debt to foreign governments and by selling off hard U.S. assets.
So Treasury Secretary John Snow has to keep America's international bankers happy.
JOHN SNOW, TREASURY SECRETARY: The implications of failing to approve this would be to tell -- tell the world that investments in the United States from certain parts of the world aren't welcome.
ROMANS: But critics say those investments aren't only welcome, the Treasury Department can't function without them. We are so deep in debt to our foreign bankers that there's nothing left but to sell off American assets.
Motherboard Manufacturing has been sold wholesale. American Computer R&D transferred to China. Even U.S. airlines are up for grabs.
And ports, the majority already are owned by foreign companies.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ROMANS: This ideology of free trade many say has spawned a trade crisis that is anything but free, anything but fair for the United States. Foreign countries and companies are allowed to buy key U.S. assets, but the U.S. is rebuff from similar investments in their countries. And the ultimate price, Lou, American jobs.
According to the Economic Policy Institute, over a 10-year period, all of this investment, this buying out wholesale of U.S. assets, it's caused a loss of 3 million American jobs. DOBBS: Three million manufacturing jobs. Those jobs replaced, of course, over time at some level, but with jobs that pay approximately a third less.
But going to the issue of the literally trillions of dollars that are now held by foreign governments and foreign businesses. That money has only one place to go, and that is now, because there is a question as to whether one, if you're holding all those dollars, puts it in a U.S. securities market, supports our bonds, our stocks, or you buy hard assets. It's pretty clear that this administration is facilitating the sale of hard assets.
ROMANS: And a lot of countries have real strategies about what to do with that money, those American dollars. We don't seem to have a real strategy about what to do. We look at these deals on a case by case basis, when you've really got to look at the bigger picture. What are the strategies that people are employing?
DOBBS: The strategy that this government is employing is -- is -- well, if it is -- if there is one, it has not been articulated, and the problem is frankly not with our trading partners and those foreign governments or those foreign corporations. The problem starts right here, in the United States, with this government and these trade policies, and a lack of a national strategy.
ROMANS: There's nothing wrong with a national strategy. We just don't seem to have one.
DOBBS: Christine, thank you very much. Christine Romans.
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0602/27/ldt.01.html
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