The outsourcing bogeyman
Regular readers might have noticed that I was focusing a bit on offshore outsourcing recently. There’s only so much one can say about the topic in a blog post, however, so I figured, what the heck, let’s turn it into a paper: According to the election-year bluster of politicians and pundits, the outsourcing of American ...
Regular readers might have noticed that I was focusing a bit on offshore outsourcing recently. There's only so much one can say about the topic in a blog post, however, so I figured, what the heck, let's turn it into a paper:
Regular readers might have noticed that I was focusing a bit on offshore outsourcing recently. There’s only so much one can say about the topic in a blog post, however, so I figured, what the heck, let’s turn it into a paper:
According to the election-year bluster of politicians and pundits, the outsourcing of American jobs to other countries has become a problem of epic proportion. Fortunately, this alarmism is misguided. Outsourcing actually brings far more benefits than costs, both now and in the long run. If its critics succeed in provoking a new wave of American protectionism, the consequences will be disastrous — for the U.S. economy and for the American workers they claim to defend.
That’s the abstract of my Foreign Affairs essay, “The Outsourcing Bogeyman,” which will come out in the May/June issue of that journal, but is now online at their web site. Here’s a link to the bibliography and footnotes, but you should comment on the piece here.
Daniel W. Drezner is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School at Tufts University and the author of The Ideas Industry. Twitter: @dandrezner
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