This past Christmas, I took inventory of the gifts under our tree. One or two were made in the United States. The rest were foreign made.

That wasn't the case in my youth. Then, foreign-made trinkets, toys, clothing and automobiles were considered inferior quality. My grandfather, a veteran of World War II and the Korean War, wouldn't entertain buying a foreign-made automobile. Not by a long shot.

But thanks to global trading, the availability of goods and services is better than ever. So are the prices.

Despite the benefits to consumers, Americans are still suspicious of foreign businesses. It's one thing to line the pockets of the companies producing and selling all the junk we buy at the dollar stores, consumer electronic markets or clothing stores, but we seem to draw a philosophical line when foreign interests want to buy U.S. interests. Take the DP World debacle. Under intense political pressure, DP World decided to separate from its newly acquired U.S. port terminal operations. Never mind that DP World's home ports were some of the first to adopt the Container Security Initiative, which gives U.S. customs officials the right to inspect containers bound for the United States.

The problem? DP World is based in Dubai.

Last year, the Chinese government-controlled CNOOC Ltd., bid $18.4 billion for Unocal Corp. It eventually withdrew the bid for the oil company amid what CNOOC Ltd. described as "unprecedented political opposition." Indeed, some members of Congress fretted aloud that the United States' economic and security interests could be threatened by a company closely tied to China's communist government.

We shouldn't hand over the store without knowing with whom we're doing business. There's nothing to stop the U.S. government from demanding elaborate identity and background checks for employees at companies deemed to be critical infrastructure. Government agencies such as the Securities and Exchange Commission must exercise due diligence in reviewing these potential sales. Xenophobia and ignorance have no place in these deliberations.

But irrational fear still carries the day. Consider the ports deal. Roughly 1 percent to 2 percent of containerized cargo in the United States is checked, which renders our ports sitting ducks. In "America: Still Unprepared—Still In Danger," former Sens. Warren Rudman and Gary Hart observed that "nineteen men wielding box-cutters forced the United States to do to itself what no adversary could ever accomplish: a successful blockade of the U.S. economy. If a surprise terrorist attack were to happen tomorrow involving the sea, rail, or truck transportation systems that carry millions of tons of trade to the United States each day, the response would likely be the same — a self-imposed global embargo."