[jpthomas]

The US must have an "absolute advantage" in private services expertise, because as the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday, foreigners outsourced 53.64 billion more office work to the United States than American companies send abroad in 2003. (See More work outsourced to US than away from it)

[WilliamofCarmichael]

Durn, I'm not a subscriber to WSJ. I was hoping they'd explain how Europe and Japan can outsource to us and do Okay but our corporations have to outsource to "developing nations'" cheap labor to survive. I real mystery to me. Durn.

Well, one poster suggested that we are just a rest area as the foreign outsourcers find their way to India and China. They better hurry they'll be going out of business real soon paying American wages.

[LibLieSlayer]

And therein lies the simple truth.

If we turn away from free trade now, our economy will slip into recession. In the short term at least, we would suffer losses from retaliatory action taken on behalf of foreign governments. If we raise tariffs, they will raise tariffs. If we eliminate outsourcing, they will eliminate outsourcing to the US.

We just witnessed what happens when we do take action to protect US markets. President Bush went out on a limb when he imposed policies to protect the steel industry from cheap imports (over a two-year period). Damn little thanks "today" for doing this, I might add. Not only did foreign governments threaten us, they sued us in the World Court...and won!!! If President Bush had not cancelled those policies, the EU would have placed embargoes on many, if not all of our goods imported into Europe.

If we pass laws that prohibit US businesses from utilizing outsourcing, how many Korean or Japanese companies will build new factories here in the US. We have a new Nissan plant in my area that employs 12,000 Americans. Toyota, Honda, and many other foreign corporations have moved some of their production to the US. This is directly due to productivity levels of the US worker, coupled with savings from the elimination of shipping product via sea-lanes.

How many jobs do we Americans enjoy now due to foreign "outsourcing" to the US? 6.4 million of us work for foreign automakers. Sony Electronics now builds some CE products here in the US. It would be naive to assume that these jobs would NOT be affected in some way, which would likely take place in foreign response to the US pulling away from free trade.

There is so much more to this problem than the above, but this is at the core when you peel back the layers.

LLS

[expat_panama]

foreigners outsourced 53.64 billion more office work to the United States than American companies send abroad

The bush-bashers strut and bellow about some mythical loss of jobs-- the job-loss is like al-Querry's so called 'foreign leaders' pure fantasy.   You show the al-Querry bush-bashers the unemployment rate and you hear 'smoke and mirrors'.  You show them the millions of new jobs -- more 'smoke and mirrors'.   

It must be a new kind of Teflon, one that reality can't stick to.