US business group fears new rift with Europe

Washinton - An American business group on Friday predicted a legal nightmare and a new strain in trade relations with the European Union if Congress extends anti-terror sanctions to foreign subsidiaries of US companies.

Senator. Frank Lautenberg wants to change a law that allows US companies such Halliburton, General Electric and Conoco-Phillips to do business through foreign subsidiaries in countries subject to US sanctions such as Iran.

"If we are serious about our sanctions laws, then we need to shut down this loophole," the New Jersey Democrat said in a statement. "When US companies devise schemes to thwart sanctions laws and do business with terrorists, they are funding terrorist activities."

But Dan O'Flaherty, vice president of the National Foreign Trade Council, whose board includes Halliburton and GE, said the amendment would create legal problems similar to those that followed former President Ronald Reagan's June 1982 decision to ban US companies and their European subsidiaries from participating in a Siberian pipeline project.

http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?click_id=3&art_id=qw1082190249693B236&set_id=1

Wouldn't this be Whore material for Limbaugh and Novak if Clinton was the Pres. today after 911!

just like the bad old days...

corporate whores had no problem arming Hitler in the build up of the Nazis...

it's beyond bullshit that corporations can live outside of the law while claiming every protection, but if some average American citizen wanted to travel to Cuba just for curiosity's sake, for instance, they would be fined and all that other bullshit.

America is like Animal Farm and Corporations "are created more equal."

And those same corporations, like Halliburton, are nothing more than the biz arm of the right wing govt.

this in the future?

What they fear is a loss of profits. The only legal nightmare they're afraid of is the increased lawyers' fees they'd have to pay to hide the business.