We are traders all. We barter and bargain, agree then rescind, resume and conclude negotiations for goods and services throughout our lives. We trade because we are inclined by nature to do so, regardless of how we earn our daily bread as defined by the color of our collar, blue or white. It is in our blood.

Next January, President-Elect Barack Obama will be severely tested on many fronts:  a two-theater war; dislocation of global markets; and a mounting environmental crisis that threatens to alter the face of the earth and the security of nations. He will be pressed for answers, not just explanations.

For many, the Middle East is the nexus of terror, provoking wars of intervention, and oil, which has created untold wealth for the region and pollution as a by-product of a fuel-addicted world. It is also a land of over 300 million people, where industry, entrepreneurship, and direct foreign investment have fed a development boom of unprecedented scale. Though Gulf states in particular have felt the effects of the current financial crisis, resulting in plummeting home prices in Dubai and the court-ordered closure of the Kuwait stock exchange, the Middle East’s influence in world markets is uncontested.

We urge the President-Elect to seize the moment and let trade flow freely into this intersection of the world, supplanting terror and war by transforming oil-dependent economies into highly diverse, fully integrated drivers of global growth and opportunity.

Let trade also rebalance a troubled region that for the past 60 years has employed a Cold War model with Israel as the sole arbiter of U.S. and Western interests.

Let trade transcend language, culture, and faith as democracies and theocracies find concord through commerce, with prosperity and security the dividends.

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