After the big hue and cry about Dubai Ports World taking over management of 6 US ports, the deal was finally quashed. Dubai Ports will sell it's US ports operations to a US company. However, there is another company, Inchcape, fully owned by the United Arab Emirates (as was Dubai Ports World) that manages a number of other US ports. The same logic that applied to not wanting the UAE to control US ports via Dubai Ports World should also apply to their Inchcape operations. But there is no hue and cry. Why not?
Foreign ownership of US assets including US ports is nothing new. In an article by Loren Steffy in the Houston Chronical entitled "A Collision of free Trade and Fear":
About a half dozen foreign entities already operate at U.S. ports, unloading cargo and managing terminals, according to Bloomberg News.
They include companies from Denmark, Japan and even a company controlled by the Chinese military.
Just last month, a UAE investment company bought Inchcape Shipping Services, the world's largest private shipping manager, which has operations in Houston.
Two years ago, DP World acquired the global ports business of Florida-based CSX Corp.
It seems UAE based investment company Istithmar bought Bristish owned Inchcape (with responsibility for managing the port of Houston) in January 2006, and then later in the year, Dubai Ports World, wholly owned by Istithmar, bought British owned P & O. Is there a pattern here? One wonders why Istithmar bought Inchcape itself while it had it's subsidiary Dubai Ports World buy P & O. And then Dubai Ports had bought the port operations of CSX Railway (formerly CEOed by current Treasury Secretary John Snow) without much notice. So the bottom line is that the UAE still owns major port operations in the US via Inchcape and CSX. Inchcape manages over 210 ports in 50 countries including Port Everglades, Florida and Houston.
For example: according to The Houston Chronicle "UAE-based firms have operated in Houston for years" and "their presence hasn't raised any misgivings about port security."
Houston Chronicle Besides the Middle Eastern nation's company whose U.S. port business is causing political headaches for the Bush administration, other companies associated with the Muslim country have been at work in Houston for a while, without any known misgivings about port security or terrorism.
There was little to no public attention paid in January when UAE investment company Istithmar bought Inchcape Shipping Services, the world's largest private shipping manager, which has a longtime presence in Houston.
The Bush family including first brother Neil Bush has close ties with Dubai. He's been paid big bucks to give speeches there. Also The George W Bush Presidential Library accepted a $1 million donation from a UAE sheik . The fact of the matter is that foreign ownership of US assets is continuing apace as the US needs capital inflows to finance its way of life. Dubai already owns US assets such as Manhattan's Essex House hotel, 
the Helmsley Building,the Church's Chicken chain and many others. Formerly, the Westin Essex House, the hotel is now called Jumeirah Essex House. Jumeirah is a Dubai based hotel chain.
As David Ignatius says in the Washington Post, "Get used to it!" Increasingly, foreign countries will be less interested in buying up US debt than in buying up US equities. As long as the US has an insatiable need for capital and not paying its bills, that is the inevitable consequence. Ignatius says: "Greater foreign ownership of U.S. assets is an inevitable consequence of the reckless tax-cutting, deficit-ballooning fiscal policies that Congress and the White House have pursued."
Finally, Inchcape operates out of more than a dozen US port cities including Houston, Miami and New Orleans arranging pilots, tugs, linesmen and stevedores among other things. According to Time magazine:
The firm is also a defense contractor which has long worked for Britain’s Royal Navy. And last June, the U.S. Navy signed on too, awarding ISS a $50 million contract to be the “husbanding agent” for vessels in most Southwest Asia ports, including those in the Middle East, according to an unclassified Navy logistics manual for the Fifth Fleet and a press release from ISS.
