So, now the question becomes: what does it mean for Dubai Ports to transfer the contracts to a United States Entity?

Via the NewsHour: Dubai Ports Pledges to Transfer Ports to U.S. Entity

MARGARET WARNER So, Simon Romero, let me just — for our viewers, I will re-read the operative sentence, because there has been a lot of debate about what it means.

The — Senator Warner said, D.P. World will transfer fully the U.S. operations to a United States entity.

Now, does that sound like full divestiture of the U.S. portion of this deal?

SIMON ROMERO, The New York Times: Well, Margaret, it’s very hard to tell at this point, because, you know, there were reports earlier today that were saying that some private equity companies in the United States were interested in bidding for those U.S. assets.

But what — like you — exactly like the D.P. World statement says, they’re not saying that they are selling them. They are simply saying that they are transferring them. So, that could very well mean that they could create a legal entity that is based in the United States, that has American managers, and even an American board of directors, but could still be effectively controlled by — by Dubai.

It would seem to me that such a deal would be noticed in the current climate.

I will confess that when I heard the phrase “a United State entity” I figured it did not necessarily mean a US-owned company. The notion that DPW might try to still be indirectly involved did not occur to me.

And to my amusement (but then again, I didn’t get much sleep last night), Haliburton gets mentioned:

SIMON ROMERO

[…]

Halliburton, for example, has done something like this in Iran, where they operated for many years, up until recently. They simply operated those — those — you know, those Iranian operations out of an offshore entity. And that could be very well what — what the Dubai company is planning to do as well.