{"id":17331,"date":"2013-03-01T11:44:41","date_gmt":"2013-03-01T16:44:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=17331"},"modified":"2013-03-01T11:58:12","modified_gmt":"2013-03-01T16:58:12","slug":"obama-administration-jeopardizes-u-s-interests-with-brazilian-defense-contract","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/17331\/obama-administration-jeopardizes-u-s-interests-with-brazilian-defense-contract\/","title":{"rendered":"Obama Administration Jeopardizes U.S. Interests with Brazilian Defense Contract"},"content":{"rendered":"

Americans might expect the U.S. government to demonstrate greater concern about who supplies resources and equipment to our men and women in uniform.\u00a0 This week, however, the Obama Administration announced<\/a> its decision to award a much-disputed, high-stakes Air Force light air support (LAS) contract to a Brazilian company over one based in Kansas.<\/p>\n

The LAS contract could be worth over $950 million, so we’re irrationally sending nearly a billion American taxpayer dollars to Brazil despite the weak state of our manufacturing sector and economy more broadly.\u00a0 But this is about more than the initial 20 aircraft, or the money associated with building them.\u00a0 Americans should also be troubled that Embraer receives tremendous subsidies from the Brazilian government, which has been very vocal in its opposition to the War on Terror and American interests while siding with Iran and Venezuela time and again.\u00a0 As one of the few nations that continues to work with the Iranian regime, Brazil and Embraer have already supplied aircraft similar to their LAS offering to Iran\u2019s Revolutionary Guard.<\/p>\n

Perhaps even more alarming, a provision<\/a> woven into Embraer\u2019s bylaws would enable the Brazilian government to halt<\/strong> the manufacturing or maintenance of the warplane at any given time, with no threat of repercussions from the U.S.\u00a0 This could mean anything from withholding parts to complete cessation of production.\u00a0 For a country so outspoken in its opposition to America\u2019s global foreign policy objectives and our stance against governments that commit such grotesque crimes against their own citizens as well as other nations, how can we trust that they won\u2019t disrupt the delivery of these aircraft in pursuit of their own political motives?<\/p>\n

The Obama Administration\u2019s decision to outsource the production of American military equipment to Brazil is not only illogical, it creates an unconscionable threat to our national security.\u00a0 Embraer and Brazil have publically stated that their immense focus on this contract is motivated by their desire to secure a U.S. Air Force endorsement of their product, which in turn allows them to more effectively market it to other nations.\u00a0 If history tells us anything, Embraer and the Brazilian government that controls it will have no qualms about selling our enemies the same aircraft they will be providing to our Air Force.<\/p>\n

It is morally and economically untenable that United States government would prefer a Brazilian supplier that is publicly opposed to the very cause for which we need the equipment.\u00a0 Awarding this contract to a historically unfriendly foreign sovereign suggests that the Obama Administration is not only careless in its foreign policy judgment, it\u2019s reckless in the equipment it selects to carry out the mission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Americans might expect the U.S. government to demonstrate greater concern about who supplies resources and equipment to our men and women in uniform.\u00a0 This week, however, the Obama Administration announced its decision to award a much-disputed, high-stakes Air Force light air support (LAS) contract to a Brazilian company over one based in Kansas. The LAS […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2524,2525,4060,342,24],"class_list":["post-17331","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-embraer","tag-hawker-beechcraft","tag-las","tag-military","tag-obama"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17331"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17331\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17334,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17331\/revisions\/17334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}