Pakistanis Fume as Clothing Sales to the U.S. Tumble

Local and domestic interests are often at odds with broad issues of global concern. However, a recent New York Times dispatch from Pakistan shows how competing global policies can also create conflict in the local sphere, resulting in global ramifications. By pursuing trade 'fast-track' authority, the Bush administration has adopted a course of action that could directly impinge upon its concurrent efforts to sustain Pakistani cooperation in the war on terrorism. The report states, "Pakistan's textile and apparel industries, which dominate the country's economy and account for 60 percent of its industrial employment, have been battered by a combination of restrictive American trade policies and repeated fears of war. Setbacks for the textile industry, including the temporary laying off of tens of thousands of workers last winter, are contributing to resentment of the United States among many young Pakistanis, Lahore residents say, while mullahs at radical local mosques have been playing on anger over job losses in their sermons.." The story notes that anti-American sentiment is partly the result of disappointment at the US trade policy favoring textile-manufacturing states. "There had been talk in Washington last autumn of a grand gesture toward Pakistan, similar to the 50 percent increase in textile quotas that the first Bush administration granted to Turkey as a reward for its help in the 1991 Persian Gulf war. But that idea fizzled in December when the current Bush administration was faced with imminent defeat in the House of its broad package of trade legislation and decided to woo six lawmakers from textile states by promising them it would not do much for Pakistan's textile industry." - YaleGlobal