Book Review: Exporting America

This article was posted on November 1, 2004.

If you're a multimillionare early retiree living off your stock portfolio, or a CEO who just got a big bonus for slashing your workforce and sending jobs overseas, outsourcing and offshoring may be in your financial interest. It's not clear that it's a plus for the other 99% of the population.

CNN anchor Lou Dobbs makes a convincing case that unfettered free trade combined with outsourcing and offshoring the very jobs that once supported a large middle-class in this country are a recipe for disaster. The rising trade deficit, ballooning Federal budget deficit, and growing national debt can all be tied to this phenomenon. Even jobs at the top of the occupational food chain are being outsourced. Hospitals can now send their X-rays and MRI scans to India to have them read and interpreted, putting US radiologists out of work.

Exporting America : Why Corporate Greed Is Shipping American Jobs Overseas

by Lou Dobbs

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The solve the problem, Dobbs suggests four policies.

1) That Federal, state, and local governments "prohibit the outsourcing of government contracts and American jobs to cheap foreign labor.

2) So called "free trade" agreements should be reviewed to ensure that they provide for fair and balanced trade. In our pursuit of "free trade" at all costs, we have given away far more than we have gained.

3) Examine our relationship to the World Trade Organization and insist that "our trading partners meet specific human rights and labor standards. We should be seeking to raise the standard of living globally, not reducung American standards to those of a third world country."

4) Insist that "any US multinational that outsources jobs should meet the same privacy standards for its American customers as if the operations were based here." This is even more important now that our financial, banking and medical claims data are being offshored.

Exporting America presents a persuasively argued case that outsourcing and free trade at any cost is not in our national interest. It's well worth reading.