Washington – President Bush, trying to put down a rapidly escalating rebellion among leaders of his own party, said Tuesday that he would veto any legislation blocking a deal for a state-owned company in Dubai to take over the management of port terminals in New York, Miami, Baltimore and other major American cities.
Bush issued the threat after the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, and the House speaker, Dennis Hastert, publicly criticized the deal and said a thorough review was necessary to ensure that terrorists could not exploit the arrangement to slip weapons into American ports.
Bush suggested that the objections to the deal might be based on bias against a buyer from the Middle East, one he said was an ally in fighting terrorism.
“After careful review by our government, I believe the transaction ought to go forward,” Bush said, referring to a study that began in October and ended, quietly and without objections from inside his administration, on Jan. 16.
“I want those who are questioning it to step up and explain why all of a sudden a Middle Eastern company is held to a different standard than a Great British company. I am trying to conduct foreign policy now by saying to the people of the world, ‘We’ll treat you fairly.”‘
The response from the White House was swift and notable for its intensity and amounted to a head-on confrontation between Bush, who has defined his presidency as being about protecting the American people, and the leadership of his party in Congress, which faces political headwinds as it approaches the midterm elections in November.
The firestorm of opposition to the deal brought expressions of befuddlement from shipping-industry and port experts.
The shipping business, they said, went global more than a decade ago, and across the United States, foreign-based firms already control more than 30 percent of the port terminals.
That list includes APL Limited, which is controlled by the government of Singapore, and which operates terminals in Los Angeles, Oakland, Calif., Dutch Harbor, Alaska, and Seattle.
Globally, 24 of the top 25 ship-terminal operators are foreign based, meaning most of the containers sent to the United States leave terminals around the world that are operated by foreign governments or foreign-based companies.
“This kind of reaction is totally illogical,” said Philip Damas, research director at Drewry Shipping Consultants of London.
“The location of the headquarters of a company in the age of globalism is irrelevant.”