Listen to this and other reports on the Israel Lobby Damage Assessment podcast!

2024 will mark the fourth decade since AIPAC and the Israeli Minister of Economics stole classified American industry data to aid passage of America’s worst bilateral trade deal.

Among all bilateral “Free Trade Agreements” (NAFTA and CAFTA are multilateral) the 1985 U.S. Israel deal has produced the highest inflation adjusted cumulative merchandise trade deficit—$365.9 billion—since going into effect. In 1984 American companies were steamrolled by corrupt politicians on the take from AIPAC-directed stealth political action committees or PACs. Today, captured U.S. federal and state agencies channel hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars away from American companies into the coffers of new, often incompetent, Israeli market entrants.

The U.S. trade secrets stolen by AIPAC and the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs were contained in the classified International Trade Commission ITC report “Probable Economic Effect of Providing Duty-Free Treatment for Imports from Israel.” The U.S. Trade Representative denied FOIA release on national security grounds in 2008 and 2009 before a review by a higher authority, the ISCAP, forced release in 2011. Report content that predicted and quantified damage to U.S. industry remains classified to this day. What has never been secret is that U.S. trade and industry groups were uniformly opposed to an FTA with Israel because Israel’s market was insignificant, geared toward exploiting foreign intellectual property and the deal offered no identifiable reciprocal benefits while opening the way for other politically driven trade policies that would explode the U.S. trade deficit and deindustrialize key sectors.

READ MORE