Abroad

Baghdad Back Door

American food and manufactured-goods exporters are doing a thriving business with Iraq, especially since the beginning of the war with Iran last year, through third-party trading in a number of Middle Eastern and European countries. The phenomenon reflects the bankruptcy of Iraq’s commitment to its Russian and Eastern European Communist suppliers. There are no hard figures for most of this indirect trade activity, but agricultural commodities, construction equipment, machine tools, and tankers, all of which are badly needed by the Iraqi economy, are being exported from the United States to places like Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in large quantities for transshipment overland to Baghdad. U.S. exports to the UAE, for example, came to almost $1 billion last year compared to $667 million in 1979. If they continue at the present rate, these exports would amount to a total of $1.2 billion in 1981 and would make the Emirates, occupying a tiny enclave on the Persian Gulf coast, America’s third-ranking trading partner in the whole Middle East. U.S. trade with Iraq had fallen drastically ten years ago after Baghdad concluded a treaty of close cooperation with Moscow. The current war knocked out what was left of direct commerce with America, but the Soviet Union and its partners were unable or unwilling to supply Iraq with what it needed. American business participation will shortly become official when a number of multinationals exhibit at the Baghdad Trade Fair later on this fall. American business is conscious that Iraq’s petroleum reserves and its large population make it an extremely promising market—in fact, the most promising in the region in the years ahead.

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Baghdad Back Door

American food and manufactured-goods exporters are doing a thriving business with Iraq, especially since the beginning of the war with Iran last year, through third-party trading in a number of Middle Eastern and European countries. The phenomenon reflects the bankruptcy of Iraq’s commitment to its Russian and Eastern European Communist suppliers. There are no hard figures for most of this indirect trade activity, but agricultural commodities, construction equipment, machine tools, and tankers, all of which are badly needed by the Iraqi economy, are being exported from the United States to places like Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in large quantities for transshipment overland to Baghdad. U.S. exports to the UAE, for example, came to almost $1 billion last year compared to $667 million in 1979. If they continue at the present rate, these exports would amount to a total of $1.2 billion in 1981 and would make the Emirates, occupying a tiny enclave on the Persian Gulf coast, America’s third-ranking trading partner in the whole Middle East. U.S. trade with Iraq had fallen drastically ten years ago after Baghdad concluded a treaty of close cooperation with Moscow. The current war knocked out what was left of direct commerce with America, but the Soviet Union and its partners were unable or unwilling to supply Iraq with what it needed. American business participation will shortly become official when a number of multinationals exhibit at the Baghdad Trade Fair later on this fall. American business is conscious that Iraq’s petroleum reserves and its large population make it an extremely promising market—in fact, the most promising in the region in the years ahead.