The Foreign Outsourcing of American Jobs: There are Stormclouds Brewing.

It's been a long time coming. Free trade has been one of the greatest frauds ever sold to the American public. It has offered the promise of cheaper prices and a bright future of higher-tech, higher-value jobs at the meager expense of sending low-end jobs overseas. Let the poor brown and yella people (sarcasm intended) do the manufacturing work while America moves up the value chain. Offshoring was supposed to bring increased prosperity to everyone, less work hours, and most importantly, access to foreign markets. It was time for America to embrace 'change' and adapt to the times.

It turned out, instead, to be a case of "be careful what you wish for".

What happened when globalization hit America was prosperity did come. However, almost all of it went to the 1%, while workers got saddled with rampant joblessness, the death of job security, and an viciously escalating combination of rat races and employment musical chairs. "Who moved the cheese?" became a buzzword when in reality the story was that there was no cheese left. Huge numbers of low end manufacturing jobs left, the number of low paying service jobs and the smattering of high-paying jobs that replaced them did not make up the difference. Meanwhile, knowledge jobs began to move overseas as well.

The world feasted on American jobs and put Americans out of work, and Americans never got to participate in that globalism thing, except as customers of cheap imports. Americans are excluded not only from the global labor market, but the domestic market as well. And as for that much awaited access to foreign markets? American workers got none of that. Products made by American companies for the Chinese market, are all made in China by Chinese workers... not Americans. Such is the way of globalism across the board.

When you offshore more jobs than you inshore, you are mathematically bound to have a trade deficit. And boy, what a trade deficit America has. America runs, yearly, a trade deficit of between $400 to $500 billion, depending on the year. America runs a trade deficit with nearly every country on Earth that it trades with. Only HALF of that trade deficit is oil; the rest is goods and services, which we import more than we export.

Free traders have been given countless chances to sell globalism to America. They sold it on the count of jobs. They tried justifying it with fear of isolationism. They warned of price increases if tariffs happened; and even warned of trade wars. They tried to appeal to the plight of foreign workers if Americans blocked imports.

America drank the kool-aid, of course, all the way up until the aughts. But it was in the aughts that people started to see right through the lies. 

• They started to ask, where are the jobs? And the free traders had no answer.
• Americans started to ask why our tariffs would be considered trade wars, but China's currency devaluation and tariffs against us weren't considered trade wars? And the free traders ducked, dodged, changed the subject, and mumbled their way past those questions.
• Our working class asked what good are cheap goods if no one has a job to afford them? And they were met with silence or streams of irrelevant gobbledygook from the pro-globalists.
• We the People asked why we should care about foreign workers and their plight when we have whole families going into the street for want of jobs? Again, the free traders went mum at best, and howled "you're racists!" ad hominems at worst.
• Finally, the workers saw the American government intervene to stop Haitian workers from getting a healthy minimum wage increase, and we asked: if this is about caring for the poor elsewhere, why is America's corporate elite fighting to keep their wages down? And the globalists shrugged and gave the skeptical public the silent treatment.
• The environmentalists looked upon the dirty skies of China and the sickly nasty brown waters off the coast of India and asked, why are we exporting our pollution over there? Again, the free traders evaded the subject.
• Most importantly, the country has been asking repeatedly, where is the working class's share of the gains from globalism? Ultimately, the free trade globalism movement had no answer.

The globalists, effectively, kept berating Americans for balking at offshoring, calling them racists, isolationists, fools, etcetera - that is when they didn't simply tune out the dissatisfied masses.

At some point they had to realize, the people were seeing right through this globalism scam, and that the time for debate and arguments were destined to come to an end. Perhaps the globalists thought that when the time for debate ended, that they would find a way to cow Americans into silence and acceptance. After all, people like me who were screaming about offshoring since before the aughts, were getting shouted down by Conservatives, Liberals and everyone in between. The globalists were riding the public relations gravy train on wheels made of biscuits and they didn't think the opposition would evolve beyond the hysterical fringe.

Funny, how that "embrace change" mantra can come back to bite you on the ass. Because boy, have things really changed when it comes to public opinion on globalism.

In 2004, the stormclouds started brewing as public opinion shifted dramatically against offshoring.

While the globalists sank to the bottom of their think tanks, safely sequestered from reality, hiding behind the shields of the media which slavishly echoed their tone-deaf arguments and proclamations about the benefits of globalism to the world... the Left and the Right, the Democratic and the Republican voters alike, began to see eye to eye on globalism. Much as they hate each other, both sides now share the same hatred for globalism and its war on America's working class. Sure, Republicans hate unions and will still vocally support offshoring over union labor, but when push comes to shove, what they say may not for much longer be what they do. Meanwhile, even the independent voters have fully turned against offshoring. America has grown tired of listening to the free traders and their defenses of globalism. Sadly, the globalists don't realize that no one wants to hear their nonsense anymore. The American people now want their heads, not their explanations.

And so three big storm supercells came into existence, swirling over the political landscape like a scene from an apocalyptic global warming movie. Political opposition to offshoring has entered the mainstream. Politicians no longer brag about fighting for globalism or its imaginary benefits to the working class. Politicians who tout their opposition to offshoring, practically have an "I win!" card when one looks at their winning record. All that remains now, is for most politicians to realize that opposing free trade is a high-value winning strategy, and when this happens, the supercells of the political apocalypse will sweep down across the latitudes: Democrats, Republicans and Independents moving like three Cat-6 hurricanes to raze all in their path. All this requires is a catalyst.

What that catalyst is, yet remains to be seen. Everything else has already happened except the final spark.

In what has to be one of the greatest ironies and insults to the globalist free traitors, one surprise candidate for that catalyst is none other than Jeffrey Immelt, the current CEO of global corporate supergiant General Electric (GE). Immelt, or more importantly GE itself, is the consummate Benedict Arnold of Corporate America, one of the top outsourcers of American jobs. His creds as a globalist are nigh unprecedented. Those of you who follow the outsourcing issue know him as the metaphorical Darth Vader of globalism... if not Palpatine himself, with GE being the Death Star.

WARNING: Those of you who have followed the issue of offshoring and know of Jeffrey Immelt, thus, should take a seat before you read on. I am quite serious about this. If you are at a coffee joint while reading this, you will probably howl and scare the hell out of other people. If you're on a train you'll jump so high you might falsely alert Homeland Security. This is a shocker for the ages.

First of all, what should shock you and strike you to the floor is that manufacturing in America is making a historical comeback. Particularly at General Electric’s famous, long-lived Appliance Park, in Louisville, Kentucky, a place which those in the know have seen decline into obsolescence and irrelevance. This industrial park, once doomed to become a ghost town, has been dramatically revived. In 2013, dishwashers will be rolling off its assembly lines, among other things to be Made in the USA.

But that's not all. Then there's... Jeffrey Immelt.

Jeffrey Immelt, the man who was and still is known as a major conductor for jobs leaving the USA, recently said this of offshoring, and I made this text invisible to protect you in case you're not sitting down at home. To see it, use the mouse to select the area below:

Jeffrey Immelt, the CEO of General Electric, said that outsourcing is “quickly becoming mostly outdated as a business model for GE Appliances”

(Link to the quote here)

Feel free to rub your eyes and go over that again, but yes, you read that one right.

Outsourcing jobs to foreign countries is Caesar, as of late his nickname has been pincushion. The knives have come out from many directions, from politicians and the public, but now... et tu, Brute? Perhaps. If Jeffrey Immelt actually puts significant actions behind his words, if his words aren't simply an act of sensationalism, then he is the catalyst, he is Brutus to the globalist Caesar. It is midnight, it is December 21, 2012, it is dogs and cats sleeping together and its star is called Wormwood.

More than likely, however, his words were sensationalism.

The alternative is that not only is America making a historical comeback with domestic manufacturing jobs, but that comeback will be accelerating, fast.

The wage differential between the US and other nations like China and Mexico, is too great for that giant sucking sound to totally reverse itself in short order.

Still, though, the things I long predicted, are coming to pass, which are making offshoring less feasible:
1) The rise in oil prices makes the cost of transporting goods here from China a serious burden upon company profits. Same for transporting it from Mexico.
2) America's productivity advantage is eating the Chinese wage advantage like swarms of hungry mosquitoes: it is killing China with bug bites.
3) Chinese wages are up; and probably, so are Mexican wages.
4) The dollar is losing value, as a direct consequence of offshoring.
5) Americans are getting really, really pissed, and those three political supercells are on the move.

Don't look for your kids' toys, hard drives and TVs to be made here any time soon; but then again, who knows? There's a storm coming, and it's one that is going to put the wind in the working class sails... and bring frozen death to the fraud that is "globalism".

How should Liberals unfurl their sails when the storm hits? By making a strong bid to take over the offshoring discussion. We should be talking about renegotiating trade deals to require dramatically higher wage guarantees for Chinese, Mexican, etc. workers as a condition of allowing imports from those regions. In addition, if they wish to export to here, they must agree to and rigorously enforce American-level workplace safety regulations and pollution controls. Unionization should be legalized there, while we turn our efforts to abolishing the Taft-Hartley Act here. Liberals need to work on a way to reconstruct globalism into a system that outlaws the exploitation of workers, world wide. If we're successful, then it will give the globalists no place where they can find cheap labor. Remember peak oil? Well, this is peak exploitation: the point where exploitation starts creeping backward.