Posted by
cehwiedel on Saturday, July 08, 2006 8:51:09 PM
The record vote before the July 4th recess concerned a free-trade agreement with Oman, S. 3569. According to Section 2 of the text of S. 3569, the purposes of the act are:
(1) to approve and implement the Free Trade Agreement between the United States and Oman entered into under the authority of section 2103(b) of the Bipartisan Trade Promotion Authority Act of 2002 (19 U.S.C. 3803(b));
(2) to strengthen and develop economic relations between the United States and Oman for their mutual benefit;
(3) to establish free trade between the 2 nations through the reduction and elimination of barriers to trade in goods and services and to investment;
and (4) to lay the foundation for further cooperation to expand and enhance the benefits of such Agreement.
Beyond a general benign regard toward free trade, why would the United States benefit from concluding a free-trade agreement with Oman?
According to the country study for Oman in the Library of Congress, it is located on the "elbow" of the Arabian Peninsula, along the southern edge of the Persian Gulf before making a sharp southward turn to follow the coast of the peninsula. Its southwestern border falls northeast of the southernmost point of the peninsula. Its landward neighbors include the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. Across the ocean are Iran and India. So Oman is strategically located for a ringside seat for current events in the Middle East and Asian subcontinent.
Economically, Oman is entirely dependent on oil revenue for export earnings. Fishing and agriculture account for a negligible fraction, and would not attract the attention of American trading partners. The free-trade agreement makes specific mention of trade in textile and apparel goods, so perhaps earlier efforts by the Omani government to diversity have succeeded at least to some extent in that area.
The religious landscape of Oman, according to that Library of Congress country study, is a bit sticky. While most Omani are Muslim, the majority are Ibadi and disinclined to integrate with Shia or Sunni. Sunni Muslims comprise about 25% of the population, while Shia make up a smaller minority. The majority Ibadi invest governing power in an imam elected by "a council of promiment laymen and shayks." This imam wields both religious and political authority.
From this extremely condensed description, I would wager that a free-trade agreement is mainly meant to keep oil flowing to feed the growing dependence of the United States on foreign-sourced oil, a dependence only increasing as shallow-water oil platforms leave the Gulf of Mexico for better-paying locations elsewhere around the globe.
Lifting restrictions on trade in textiles and apparel would support the efforts of the Omani government to diversity its export economy.
An ancillary benefit might be angling to open up or liberalize Omani society, loosen religious restrictions, or generally tie Oman more closely to the United States; perhaps edge toward military cooperation, overt or covert.
Given the present dependence of the United States economy on oil, and the intransigence of the problem of developing domestic sources of oil for reasons varying from opposition by environmental interest groups to lack of economically exploitable oil fields, it would seem in the interest of the United States to encourage closer ties with Oman.
Dianne Feinstein, the esteemed senior Senator from California, voted YES on S. 3569.
I support that vote.
Barbara Boxer, the esteemed junior Senator from California, did not cast a vote. She apparently felt that some other activity was more important than securing a trade agreement with a strategically important Gulf state. Where was she?
[You are invited to visit my personal website at www.cehwiedel.com, where I write on far more than the California delegation to the United States Senate.]