While we hear reports of our economy doing good, we are presented with a
harsh reminder of what outsourcing has done to our nation. This from the
Associated
Press:
General Motors Corp. said Tuesday it plans to nearly triple the number of
cars it produces in India to meet growing demand in the South Asian country.The announcement came just weeks after the company said it would slash
30,000 jobs and scale back production in the United States.GM previously had announced plans to increase production in India from
more than double the 25,000 cars a year it currently produces in the
country. Lawrence Burns, vice president for research and development, said
Tuesday that the number of vehicles made in India would eventually reach
80,000.However, Burns provided few details of GM’s plans for India, a country of
1 billion people with a fast growing economy that many Western manufacturers
have long viewed as a potentially huge market.Burns insisted jobs were not being moved from the United States, and said
much of the new production would come from increasing the hours of workers
already employed by the company, although he did say that some new jobs
would be added. GM currently employs about 2,000 people in India.
Read complete article
here.
This is a harsh blow to the American worker. While workers suffer here to
feed the family or keep a roof over their heads, other nations flourish from our
losses. This is an example of how free trade is hurting our nation rather than
helping it.
Luckily there is still holds of CAFTA as the Central American countries
realize that open trade is also a way to exploit the cheaper labor of other
nations.
We were told that our nation would have comfort in being a leader in the tech
world, however China has now surpassed our country as the leading exporter of
tech goods. This is another blow to our economical future as we our slowly being
left with only the service sector. That means more citizens going to work at
Wal-Mart and McDonalds, jobs which were once for the high school student and
retirees.
If we continue down this world, our country faces a dim future of becoming a
third world nation also. It is time for us to have leaders with long term goals
and planning and not worrying about the quick buck that can be made by their
corporate contributors.