Online Casino

Recently released reports confirm that President-elect Barrack Obama's choice as new United States Trade Representative (USTR) will be former mayor of Dallas, Texas, Ron Kirk.

In his new role, Kirk will be entrusted to settle much of the mess which was left behind by the office’s former Ambassador, Susan Schwab. Her office had negotiated conflicts between treaties that dealt with the Bush administration’s policy of ignoring many US trade partners and the absurd hard lining stance on online casinos.

A situation awaits Kirk in his new office that is quickly escalating into what could be a very problem over serious international trade, centring on the US. It has come to light that in the past, the USTR has not appeared to have been responding to urgent calls from several European Union leaders, in addition to those from within the United States Congress itself, to halt actions being taken against foreign Internet casino operators. 

European Union Commissioner, Peter Mandelson has made a formal request that a halt be called to US prosecutions being made against online casino operators. This would be effective until such of the free trade treaties’ legal obligations have been properly examined and negotiations for a solution initiated. Despite the seriousness of this situation, the concerns of the European Union have barely been acknowledged by Ambassador Schwab. This has been highlighted by the current strong arm tactics being used to force Anurag Dikshit of India, co-founder of Partygaming, which is registered in England into a guilty plea and the forfeiture of some $300 million in a federal court in Manhattan.

Recently, the World Trade Organization has awarded damages to Antigua against the United States for its protectionist online gambling policies but the office of the USTR has caused negotiations to drag on between the countries by allowing several of the deadlines that were set to resolve these damages to pass. This has created the risk of further charges brought before the WTO.

Ron Kirk is well known as a strong proponent of free trade. A member of the Obama transition team has described part of Kirk’s duties as a responsibility for working towards keeping all foreign markets open to goods from the United States. Unfortunately, as the fiasco surrounding this essential communication with the European Union becomes even worse, it will make retaining these markets even harder. That is unless big changes are made in the way the United States parody their seeming unilaterally closed borders to the online casino industry.