Trading with the enemy

When goods are bought and sold on the open market it is hard to “protect” your products from unsavory ownership. But recent disclosures and news reports regarding U.S. trade with Iran shows a troubling practice both in the business world and in our federal government. According to the reports we have been exporting fur clothing, cigarettes, perfume, brassieres, and possibly to prop up their Potempkin president – bull semen. None of this is going to spell our doom, nor will the nickel and dime military supplies we also sell them, evidently including some from Idaho, although that just doesn’t pass the smell test.

However with regard to pure business I can think of four reasons to sell to an outright enemy, and make no mistake that Iran is enemy one of the U.S. in their declared war of Islamic radicalism against the free world. Of course there are those who do not believe Iran is an enemy, and for them is reason number one. We trade with Iran to show the Iranian people that we have a good heart. That while our governments may argue no Iranian woman will want for a bra or a fur coat because of the United States.

Reason two is to “infiltrate” western products into the sandy empire and hook the people on our vices. First it will be cigarettes and perfume, then iPhones and DVR’s, followed by Krispy Kremes and Red Bull energy drinks (no relation I am told to the bull semen). Then we hit them with Wal-Mart, and Big Macs, and their President Ahmadinejad will be on scarier footing than Barack Obama in a knife store with Jessie Jackson.

Once fully addicted there will be no chance of war as the Iranian people will not risk losing their western products, lifestyles, and declining health.

Reason three is simply that in the United States the government does not tell private business who to sell to and who not – unless it wants to. And certainly a Republican President restricting trade under some “axis of evil” edict during a sluggish economy just might get the Dems sufficiently united and motivated they would figure out how to win an election that is already theirs for the showing up.

Reason four for trading with the enemy is that we are profit-blinded and have no values. Years ago when I was first studying Japanese management principles I learned they do not do business with people they don’t like. That would be the United States’ trade policy if I were President. I am not, nor am I Bill Gates, but if I were I would not sell any Microsoft products to Iran. Period. I would tell all of my wholesale customers that if I catch any of them reselling to Iran I will cut them off too.

Such a business imposed embargo would not prevent Iran from having the products, but it would make a point and I would feel great that I had inconvenienced them. If our government is too stupid or slack kneed to do what is right business leaders should not be.

It is a failed lesson to tell your dog to “go lay down,” while you are at the dinner table and then slip them bites under your chair. So it is with embargoes and sanctions. “No” means no, and I would respect any business that just said “no, we will not prop up this backward, brutal and threatening regime by trading bras for friendship.