Senator John Kerry has placed the politically sensitive issue of US job exports to low cost Asia at the heart of his campaign, vowing to plug legal loopholes promoting offshore outsourcing.
Both Kerry and his vice-presidential running mate John Edwards said in their nomination acceptance speeches at the Democratic party convention last week that they would move swiftly to curtail shipping of jobs overseas.
Kerry told cheering delegates he would "close the tax loopholes that reward companies for shipping jobs overseas" and instead "reward companies that create and keep good paying jobs right where they belong -- in the good old USA."
He has promised the most sweeping reform of international tax law in four decades to halt the flow of American jobs overseas. At least 38 state legislatures have or are considering anti-outsourcing proposals.
"We value an America that exports products, not jobs and we believe American workers should never have to subsidize the loss of their own job," Kerry said as he placed tax changes to check outsourcing as part of his "economic plan to build a stronger America."
With the unemployment hovering at 5.6 percent, President George W. Bush has come under fire for more than two million job losses during his tenure and a ballooning trade deficit of US$46 billion, highlighting the tensions over moving employment overseas.
Most of the US jobs are going to Asia, particularly India and China as well as Southeast Asia, including the Philippines, Malaysia and Thailand.
"I think I speak for millions of our neighbors when I say: We are tired of seeing American jobs shipped overseas," said Stephanie Tubbs-Jones, a Democratic party lawmaker from Ohio, where 250,000 people have lost their jobs since Bush, a Republican, took office in 2001.
"In my homeland of Cleveland, the unemployment rate is over 11 percent, and more than 24,000 workers stand in the unemployment line instead of on a factory line," she told the Democratic convention.
Backing Democratic party concerns over outsourcing is the 13 million strong American Federation of Labour and Congress of Industrial Organization (AFL-CIO), the largest US workers' union group.
At the convention, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney introduced to delegates a machinist from Iowa whose job in a printing plant was shipped to China.
Now, he works in a grocery store for half the wages with no health insurance and pension benefits, Sweeney said.
But the US Chamber of Commerce, which is leading the effort to stop laws that seek to punish firms for shipping jobs overseas, said offshoring was part of free trade.
Restricting US firms from sourcing globally would invite reprisals from trading partners, undermine competitiveness and threaten American global leadership, said the chamber, representing 3 million companies, in a report to both Republican and Democratic parties ahead of elections.
Chamber President Thomas Donohue said it was important not to confuse jobs sent overseas with those that were disappearing from the US economy.
"These jobs, mostly in manufacturing, aren't going to China or Mexico. They are going to a country you've never heard of -- a country called `productivity,'" he said.
In the first government report on outsourcing, the Bureau of Labour statistics found that just two percent of all mass layoffs in the first quarter of the year were associated with the movement of work outside the US.
Donohue said a "rough consensus" was that 300,000 to 500,000 service jobs have been moved so far and that an average of 250,000 per year could move over the next decade.
He said moving work overseas allowed companies to be close to key, emerging markets and strengthen their bottom lines, reduce consumer prices, focus on more profitable operations and create new and better jobs in the US.
But Hillary Clinton, a Democratic senator, cited a recent study which showed that savings from the shipping of jobs overseas were exaggerated.
The senator represents New York, where nine out of the 10 largest firms surveyed are predicted to perform IT or business process work offshore.
The primary reason given by 90 percent of them was "cost savings" but a study which analyzed these savings found that they were not as large as many employers believed, Clinton said in a commentary in the Wall Street Journal last week.
She called for a national agenda that promotes research through tax credits and further direct investments in science as well as tax incentives for jobs.
"We cannot afford to fall behind India and China, who graduate far larger numbers of scientists and engineers," she said.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to