What the Candidates Won’t Explain about Outsourcing

Contrary to the misconceptions so often reinforced in the media, outsourcing is not the product of U.S. businesses chasing low wages or weak environmental and labor standards abroad. Businesses are concerned about the entire cost of production, from product conception to consumption. Foreign wages and standards are but a few of the numerous considerations that factor into the ultimate investment and production decision. Those critical considerations include: the quality and skills of the work force; access to ports, rail, and other infrastructure; proximity of production location to the next phase in the supply chain or to the final market; time-to-market; the size of nearby markets; the overall economic environment in the host country or region; the political climate; the risk of asset expropriation; the regulatory environment; taxes; and the dependability of the rule of law, to name some.

The imperative of business is not to maximize national employment, but to maximize profits. Business is thus concerned with minimizing total costs, not wages, and that is why those several factors are all among the crucial determinants of investment and production decisions. Locales with low wages and lax standards tend to be expensive places to produce all but the most rudimentary goods because, typically, those environments are associated with low labor productivity and other economic, political, and structural impediments to operating smooth, cost-effective supply chains. Most of those crucial considerations favor investment in rich countries over poor.