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IPFS News Link • United States

Next Time Someone Says Nothing Is Made in the USA Anymore, Show Them This

• http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org

Who says nothing is made in the USA anymore?

Certainly not the well-heeled denizens of the State Department's diplomatic corps. And they should know. That's because they're stationed on the frontlines of the ongoing battle to preserve Uncle Sam's dominant market share of the global weapons trade. Luckily for the Military-Industrial Complex, it turns out that "Made In the USA" inspires a lot of brand loyalty, even if actual loyalty is often a harder sell (paging Saudi Arabia). To wit, not only was America the world's leading arms dealer in 2014 with $36.2 billion in sales, but it topped that 35% surge in sales over 2013 with yet another profitable spike to $46.6 billion in 2015.

As Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) determined in its recent report on the global arms trade, the United States maintains a commanding "33 percent share of total arms exports" and is the world's top seller for five years running. And its customer base includes "at least" 96 countries, which is nearly half of the world's nations. A robust 40 percent of those exports end up in the Middle East. Perhaps that's why the State Department is so darn bullish on the prospects of Uncle Sam's booming business of selling things that go "boom!"

That's the takeaway from a recent report in Defense News highlighting the marketing push by "Commercial Officers" stationed at the US embassy in Jordan. They worked the crowd at the kingdom's eleventh bi-annual Special Operations Forces Exhibition and Conference (SOFEX).  Like many of the nearly 100 military-themed "trade shows" held around the world this year alone, SOFEX offered the profiteers of doom an opportunity to display their merchandise and to cut deals with bellicose browsers ready to pull the trigger on a deadly impulse buy. Some of the bigger, "glitzy" trade shows — like the International Defence Exposition and Conference(IDEX) held yearly in Abu Dhabi — are full-on one-stop-shopping destinations for the up-and-coming military power on the move, the newly-minted pro-Western junta eager to armor-up, and the forward-thinking "Coalition Partner" looking for the latest in "kinetic warfare."

If nothing else, trade shows offer defense contractors a chance to give out "promotional tchotchkes" to potential future customers who might be swayed to double-back by a branded camouflage carryall or a Digi Camo Military Bert Stress Reliever. No doubt it's a tedious affair, but the presenters toiling behind the displays are not alone on the battlefield of commerce. That certainly was the case at SOFEX, where the US Embassy deployed Senior Commercial Officer Geoffrey Bogart and Regional Safety and Security chief Cherine Maher to act as sale-force multipliers for America's military moneymakers. As Jen Judson detailed, Bogart and Maher tracked down sales leads throughout a region gripped by chaos since America wantonly destroyed a bystander nation under false pretenses (a.k.a. Iraq). Here are Judson's highlights from Bogart and Maher's magical misery tour of the profitable market forces currently shaping America's recently reshaped Middle East: JORDAN: "We are very high on the safety and security market in Jordan," Geoffrey Bogart, a commercial officer at the US Embassy said. Bogart said there is an abundance of market prospects for US companies to do business in Jordan, including in border security, cyber security, command and control centers, telecommunications equipment, military vehicles, artillery, tactical equipment, bomb and metal detectors, and closed circuit television (CCTV) and access control.