Leslie Wayne on offsets, which are

any form of aid � direct investments, agreements to help countries export their goods, pacts to use more foreign components in the weapons sold, even transferring subassembly jobs overseas.

Or to put it another way:

"Offsets are the equivalent of what we used to do when we bribed foreign officials," said Robert E. Scott, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal research group in Washington. "It's a tragedy, and it's a race to the bottom. The best way to avoid these kinds of competitive and disruptive games is to outlaw the practice."

Many of the businesses themselves don't like them, either:

"Everything about offsets is totally counter to a free-trade philosophy. If we have the world's best armaments, other countries should buy them free and clear. The mice here are in charge of the cheese."

Of course, this being the NYT, they're also criticized for costing the United States "thousands of precious manufacturing jobs".