Wall Street Journal’s Marketwatch via PRNewsWire
The ITC compiled “business confidential” information and intellectual property solicited from US corporations and industry associations into a classified report for the negotiations. But on August 3, 1984 the Washington Post broke the news that the FBI was investigating how AIPAC obtained one of the fifteen numbered and tightly controlled copies of the classified report. The ITC later confirmed it was also obtained by the Israeli government.
Since the agreement was signed in 1985, US trade with Israel shifted from surplus to a cumulative $71 billion deficit (adjusted for inflation). The 2008 $7.8 billion deficit with Israel was equivalent to 126,000 US manufacturing related jobs. It is the only bilateral FTA producing multi-billion dollar losses to the US every year for the last decade but total losses are still unknown. According to IRmep director Grant F. Smith the agreement was the beginning of a chain reaction of intellectual property theft documented by industry associations and US counterintelligence agencies: “US corporations were betrayed by the leaks of their intellectual property during treaty negotiations in 1984. US pharmaceutical, defense and other industries continue to lose billions in revenue to Israeli copy-cat merchandise. We are only beginning to fully understand the larger impact of AIPAC and the Israeli government’s ongoing acquisition of classified US information.” More