The motive has always been to remain competitive. In today’s business environment, profit and even survival depend on making constant improvements throughout supply chains by lowering costs and improving quality, designs, cycle times and processes. Through specialization and trade, businesses develop important competitive advantages that help them become more flexible and innovative in rapidly changing markets.

      Indeed, the best companies keep costs low and boost productivity by doing what they do best and outsourcing the rest.

      Even when it involves foreign workers, outsourcing benefits individual companies. Many Americans, however, express a deep unease over reports of firms’ exporting jobs and displacing domestic workers by moving jobs to India, China or other up-and-coming nations.

            The concern is understandable. Job losses are painful, especially when they are related to global economic forces beyond individual workers’ control. As reports of outsourcing grow, many Americans are advocating policies designed to preserve existing jobs and industries. But many economists — including such notables as Milton Friedman and Jagdish Bhagwati — discourage these efforts as harmful to the overall economy. They argue that outsourcing increases efficiency and productivity and leads to competitiveness, innovation and ever-larger market opportunities...

...Continued in the pages of Twin Plant News, Subscribe Today!