adjusted by IRmep.

Background

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative has claimed ILFTA—America’s first FTA—was the “foundation for expanding trade and investment between the U.S. and Israel.” Martin Indyk, former director of AIPAC’s affiliated think tank the Washington Institute for Near East Policy—pushed the deal and later said it was the “wedge that opened up the Congress to free trade agreements throughout the world, including the NAFTA agreement.”

However, a review of how ILFTA came into existence and how it works today reveals why it is the worst bilateral agreement ever signed by the U.S. Key to its failure is that the FTA was solely designed to benefit Israel and not the U.S. The inability of U.S. policymakers to uphold U.S. interests and law enforcement failures also contributed to thedebacle.

The initiative for a bilateral trade deal came at the insistence of Israel and its U.S. lobby AIPAC. Along with favored economist Stanley Fischer, the group viewed unfettered Israeli exports to the U.S. as a means to stave off the results of severe Israeli economic mismanagement and isolation from the country’s neighbors.

U.S. industry, upon first learning about a proposed Israel free trade deal in the Federal Register in 1984, correctly saw the deal as a political give-away orchestrated by Israel that would open the way for other politically motivated and distorting trade deals.

The International Trade Commission held hearings in Washington in 1984 and encouraged U.S. industries to testify and privately submit sensitive business information, including proprietary market data and industry processes, detailing why they opposed the U.S. Israel