Foreign Policy In Focus: Iraq War is Bad for Business By Jim Lobe
On top of the human and financial costs of the war in Iraq, the Bush administration's foreign policy may be costing U.S. corporations business overseas, according to a new survey of 8,000 international consumers released this week by the Seattle-based Global Market Insite (GMI) Inc.
Brands closely identified with the U.S., such as Marlboro cigarettes, America Online (AOL), McDonald's, American Airlines, and Exxon-Mobil, are particularly at risk. GMI, an independent market research company, conducted the internet survey with consumers in eight countries from Dec. 10-12. One-third of all consumers in Canada, China, France, Germany, Japan, Russia, and the United Kingdom said that U.S. foreign policy, particularly the "war on terror" and the occupation of Iraq, constituted their strongest impression of the United States.
Twenty percent of respondents in Europe and Canada said they consciously avoided buying U.S. products as a protest against those policies. That finding was consistent with a similar poll carried out by GMI three weeks after Bush's November election victory.
Jim Lobe is a political analyst with Foreign Policy In Focus, online at http://www.fpif.org. He also writes regularly for Inter Press Service.
See new Present Danger commentary online at: http://www.presentdanger.org/commentary/2004/0412europoll.html
With printer friendly PDF version at: http://www.presentdanger.org/pdf/gac/0412europoll.pdf
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