WASHINGTON: Concerns about American jobs being shipped overseas have become a central theme in the political and economic debates in this election year and Senator Max Baucus (D-MT), a ranking member on the Senate Finance Committee, and a panel of experts spoke on ‘Preparing America to Compete Globally: A Forum on Offshoring’ at Brookings Institution on March 3.

Baucus said dramatic improvements in communications technology have allowed workers in India and China to provide services that earlier were the stronghold of American workers. This has resulted in cost-savings for businesses, but dislocation and anxiety for American working men and women. He criticized the Bush administration for not doing enough to address serious concerns of outsourcing of tech jobs to low-wage countries like India, China and Russia. Baucus said that quick and decisive action must be taken in order to create new jobs in the United States, retain existing ones, and retrain people to adjust to an evolving global economy and a technologically-advanced world-class competition.

Following Baucus’ remarks, a panel of experts, three from Brookings and a private sector official discussed various aspects of outsourcing and its potential effect on the future of America.