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10
Jul 12

Obama’s record on outsourcing draws criticism from the left

The left from time to time shows some intestinal fortitude in speaking out against this fraud in the White House. Obama has gotten away with deceiving his supporters and party because of this notion that he is the lesser-of-two-evils. When in fact he is a pawn of the 1 percent. But it is still an uphill battle since so many can’t break away from the propaganda that Democrats are better than the Republicans:

While White House officials say they have been waiting on Congress to act, Obama’s critics, primarily on the political left, say he has repeatedly failed in other ways to protect American jobs from being moved overseas. They point to a range of actions they say he should have taken: confronting China, reining in unfettered trade and reworking a U.S. visa program that critics say ends up sending high-tech jobs abroad.

[...]“I think he has walked away from the campaign commitments,” said Scott, the institute’s director of trade and manufacturing policy research. “He has done far too little to improve U.S. trade.”

According to a study by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, large American companies in 2010 barely added any workers in the United States, increasing their numbers by 0.1 percent, while they expanded their foreign workforce by 1.5 percent. That was business as usual — between 2004 and 2010, the bureau reported, foreign affiliates hired 2 million workers while 600,000 were added by the companies at home.

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25
Jun 12

Obama’s Hypocrisy on Outsourcing

The mainstream media has been parroting the Obama campaign charge that Romney outsources jobs. What they don’t tell us is that the President is a hypocrite when it comes to outsourcing jobs. His record is just as deplorable:

The media has picked up the Obama campaign’s attack on Romney, amplifying its message. The overall narrative being created by the Obama campaign is clear: Romney has through his business practices support outsourcing in the past, and is likely to in the future — unlike President Obama.

Unfortunately, the story is not that simple. “We should not oppose offshoring or outsourcing,” said one high-ranking presidential economic adviser at a conference of companies interesting in outsourcing last summer. The adviser then went on to compare opponents of outsourcing to “luddites who took axes to machinery early in England’s industrial revolution.”

Those quotes do not come from a Romney adviser. They come from Larry Summers, who was President Obama’s director of the White House National Economic Council. And Summers — who gave the speech after he left the White House — is not a lone voice among Obama officials.

Obama once promised to re-negotiate the outsourcing-friendly North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which he criticized on the campaign trail. Here’s a copy of a mailer that Obama used during the 2008 election to talk about his opposition to NAFTA…

Shortly after taking office, Obama announced that he would not be doing this. His administration then went on to push for trade deals with Colombia, Panama, and South Korea that are predicted to cost the loss of over 200,000 American jobs.

Despite strong opposition from a majority of House Democrats, these deals were passed into law and are currently in the process of being implemented.

So, as the record stands, President Obama, too, is also supportive of outsourcing. But Obama did not pass these trade deals alone. He had strong backing from many Senate Democrats and from most of the Republican party. This support materialized despite the fact that there is strong public opposition to “free trade” policies that privilege investor rights and do not protect worker and environmental rights.

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