But the United States has specifically rejected granting trade concessions to Pakistan and Turkey, larger countries that are felt to be critical to the anti-terrorism effort. After the 2001 attacks, both countries asked for the right to export more textiles to the United States, hoping to bolster an industry important to economic growth, and which employs about 60 percent of Pakistan's industrial workforce. Both were turned down. Negotiations for a free-trade agreement with Egypt, meanwhile, have stalled.
According to calculations by Edward Gresser, a trade specialist at the Democratic Party-affiliated Progressive Policy Institute, those decisions and tariff policies kept growth in non-oil imports from Muslim nations to 3.2 percent from 2000 to 2003. For example, imports from Indonesia, a hot spot of fundamentalism and the world's most populous Muslim country, fell to $9.1 billion from $9.8 billion from 2000 to 2003, though they appear on track to bounce back this year. Gresser examined U.S. trade statistics at The Washington Post's request.
Some key non-Muslim countries did not fare well either. While the Philippines has been battling an Muslim insurgent group with U.S. assistance, imports from the country other than oil fell from $13.7 billion to $10 billion from 2000 to 2003.
The past few years were ones of sluggish growth generally for global trade. Overall, non-oil imports by the United States rose only 2.1 percent since 2000. From that perspective, the imports from Muslim countries fared better than the norm.
But trade rules also appeared to be a factor. Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador and Colombia can export most goods to the United States duty-free under the Andean Trade Preference Act, and imports from those countries jumped 16 percent. Central American nations, given preferential access to the United States under the Caribbean Basin Initiative, enjoyed an increase of around 5 percent. Imports from the 38 sub- Saharan countries covered by the African Growth and Opportunity Act, meanwhile, rose 39 percent.
The U.S. reluctance to grant concessions may soon have even more adverse consequences, Lindsey said, when international textile and apparel quotas expire on Jan. 1.
Once the quota system expires, creating more of a free-for-all in the industry, China is expected to grab an enormous share of the global textile and apparel market. India is also poised to vastly expand its share. Many developing countries fear that the only way their industries can survive Chinese competition is with preferential tariffs that give them a price advantage in the United States and Europe.
"Many countries in the Muslim world are facing a trade shock" when the quotas are lifted, Lindsey said.
A senior State Department official said that although "it's certainly true that some countries are going to have difficulties as quotas come off," Pakistan and Turkey are unlikely to be hit hard. Many industry experts forecast that Pakistan and Turkey will be among the winners in a quota-free world, both because of their competitiveness and, in Turkey's case, its proximity to the European market.
Pakistani and Turkish officials question whether such optimism is justified, and other populous Muslim countries -- Egypt, Bangladesh and Indonesia, for example -- could well be among the losers. Already, Muslim countries have suffered in competition with the Chinese in products such as baby clothes, for which quotas have been eliminated. According to Gresser, the share of U.S. imports of such goods from the Muslim world dropped from 16 percent in 2001 to 11 percent in 2003, and appears headed still lower this year.
