I have commented on this before, so this really merely serves to illustrate that a half-year in the my expectations were on target.

The initial data are clear, despite more than a year of preparation, rather obviously American firms are generally uninterested in the market - which is understandable although in some ways leaves money on the table as despite the drawbacks, there are interesting things to leverage on the south side of the Med basin.

Rather more shameful is the clear inability - and in no small part, lack of desire and will - on the Moroccan side to leverage the agreement to boost exports.

Yes, one can say six months in is not much time to judge, and that's a fair comment, but on the other hand this was delayed somewhat over a year beyond its theoretical effective date, plenty of time for Maghrebine actors to prepare plans and take action.

That they have not, however, is not particularly surprising despite the overdone expectations all around.

I see the same thing, for example, in Jordan where almost a decade into an FTA the most active parties leveraging that FTA and the similarly structured US-Israel-Jordan special industrial zone scheme (known as QIZ) are in fact foreigners. Not Jordanians that is. Not even Palestinian-Jordanians.

As I have argued in the past, too much of the southern Med basin commercial and business culture is impregnated with two nefaste influences: (i) the doukakine spirit (or if we're to put this in Egyptian terms, the ba'al spirit), a business approach based on passively sitting around waiting for business to come to you, maybe arranging your wares a bit according to your convenience, but never paying much attention to making things truly convenient for the customer (this is a retail approach, but by analogy one can extend it to the entire business community's habits across the region), (ii) the nanny government expectation, that is the Sulta should/will/has to bring me business, and protect me from my own passivity and generally weak initiative - as part of the social contract that also has historically severely punished the boundary pushing, prospecting spirits - what Keynes called "animal spirits." The MENA governments have historically preferred, favoured and rewarded tame behaviour (and arguably in most cases despite public lip service to entrepreneurial spirit, continue to prefer), while punishing-sometime severely independant initiative.

These patterns - some of which are 'ancient but many of which really date from the combination of the Colonial period and the post-Colonial continuation dressed up in "Nationalisation" clothes - are hard to undo, even presuming that the various governments really want to do so. Which is a bit of a stretch.

Now, mind you, if there is one area where I think that the Americans have a proper policy -if one that is infected by unrealistic and magical thinking- it is in the area of fighting for economic liberalisation in the MENA region, for despite the weak traditions of individual initiative, there is a lot of talent and decent infrastructure that is being very poorly leveraged in economic terms in the region. The American push for economic liberalisation is spot on correct, whatever the whinging on by the domestic Left, although it is simultaneously truly poorly conceived as they seem to completely misspecify the blockages, expect returns on their efforts in ridiculously short terms, and set benchmarks that - as in Iraq - are utterly magical; rather than looking at reasonable incremental change. They also seem to have no fucking clue at all that their views need to be sold and sold well to the South Med Basin populaces who are NOT Eastern Europeans looking to shake off the yolk of Soviet masters (a common and utterly moronic misconception and misframing both in economic and political terms by Americans in region), but rather more resembling Russians with a divided sense of what the old system did for them - sure it clearly doesn't work anymore, but the "savage" liberal markets are scary and the old system was "native" to them, not imposed by imperial foreigners.

However, Americans, like the British Victorians, seem infected with the unique blindness that their ideas are uniquely self-evident and not requiring any real sales and explanation job, for everyone who has any sense would want to be just like them.

Which of course is not self-evidently the case.

Leading the US, in this economic field as in its other policy initiatives in region, to gratuitiously piss away good will and opportunities.

It's maddening really, as this is as an area - economic policy - where (ceteris paribus) Americans are actually pretty decent in, the advice proferred - when it is not magically assuming transformation overnight - is not bad.

But it is never explained well, and not in a manner aimed at the general populace.

I would add, however, that the completely incompetent, magically delusional American FP at present in re MENA certainly is also acting as a clear brake on making its economic FP work.