In order for the argument that "American jobs are taken away by foreigners" to be at all credible, it must first be proved:
(1) the same jobs producing the same output, which were previously performed by Americans, are now being done by foreign workers offshore, in the same proportion; (2) that Americans actually wanted to do those jobs, or were prepared to do them; (3) that it would be practically feasible to do those jobs in the USA, under the given conditions. Undoubtedly this is the case for a portion of jobs lost to the USA. But for many other jobs this is simply not true, because: (1) If an employer closes down a plant in the USA, and opens up a new plant overseas with a different production technique or a different output, then it is silly nonsense to say "American jobs are taken away by foreigners", and it ignores "who" is actually taking those jobs away, namely American employers and American investors. After all, it is American investors and employers who decide to hire workers in the USA or overseas; it is not as though "greedy workers" offshore are "grabbing or stealing" employment opportunities from American workers. They are in no position to do so, they can only respond to employment opportunities which are actually being offered where they are. (2) many new so-called "outsourced" foreign jobs, performed by workers offshore for American employers, do not represent the substitution of an American job by a foreign job at all, but rather the creation of a new and different job by an American employer offshore, reflecting an investment decision that overall production costs are cheaper offshore. In other words, in considering whether to hire new employees in the USA or offshore, the employer decides for economic reasons to hire offshore. The managerial, financial and marketing functions might be sited in the USA, whereas the actual product is made overseas. (3) Production outsourced by American employers to foreign countries very often involves getting less foreign workers to produce a larger output than was made previously within the USA, and so, it is not as though enormous amounts of new jobs are being created in foreign countries as a result of outsourcing anyway. If an American employer previously used 2,000 American workers to produce an output worth $400 million and then uses 1,500 foreign workers to produce an output worth $500 million, it's pretty silly to talk about "foreign workers stealing American jobs". The notion of "foreign workers stealing American jobs" is faulty because: (1) while blaming the working class as per usual, it fails to explain exactly how foreign workers could possibly "steal" American employment in the first place, (2) it conveniently ignores that the decision to reduce employment levels in the USA, is made by American employers and investors, and not by American workers, who are just looking for a job where they are, because they have no other way to survive, and cannot easily move somewhere else. (3) the same American people who argue "foreign workers stealing American jobs", are quite happy to consume competitively priced products imported from overseas, and in many cases could neither do otherwise, nor stay within their budget, without purchasing foreign-made products. Thus, in reality, the argument that "American jobs are taken away by foreigners" is just imperialist jingoism, the logical endpoint of which is that American workers, uniformed and in civvies, are send to Iraq at the risk of dying, to grab oil resources to fuel American cars, even although they could quite easily negotiate to get oil from other sources if required. Taking 2002 data, the total dollar value of goods imported into the USA for actual use within the USA (i.e. not re-exported) was about $1.1 trillion. But only about 40% of that total dollar value of imported goods used in the USA consisted of ordinary consumer goods used by households, and of all consumer goods and services imported, at least 10-15% consisted purely of luxury consumption goods, i.e. things like jewellery, trinkets, antiques, numismatic coins, works of art, gold, luxury cars, luxury clothing, luxury furnishings, pleasurecraft, luxury cars, personal aircraft and so on. Then you must conclude that out of the total dollar value of all goods imported into the USA, only a third refers to ordinary consumer durable and perishable goods, representing 10% of the value of all consumer goods bought by Americans each year. Out of the total dollar value of all goods and services imported into the USA, only a quarter consists of ordinary consumer durables and perishables. If you are not lazy, and you are prepared to do some research into real American working-class consumer expenditure, then you would conclude, that foreign goods and services they buy, comprise only a very small portion of their wages, and the only "big ticket" foreign durables in their budget, are foreign-made cars and foreign-made personal computers. (If you actually look at total American personal consumer expenditure, only 12% is actually expenditure on durable goods anyway). American workers produce new cars and trucks worth $377.5 billion, $80 billion of these American-made vehicles are exported, and new cars and trucks worth $133 billion are imported. So the stock of new cars and trucks appearing on the US domestic market is nowadays worth about $390 billion or so. On the other side of the story, only about a fifth of the total annual payroll in the USA of about $1.2 trillion) is paid out to American working-class people producing new tangible goods. Just under a third of those goods are not consumed in the USA, but exported, yet those exported goods represent two-thirds of the total value of all exports as conventionally defined. This is just to say that the "free trade versus protectionism" debate is really irrelevant from the point of view of the American working class, and if any thing, they benefit from free trade. Jurriaan
