In The News

Topsy-Turvy World

R Ravimohan April 16, 2004
When R. Ravimohan, a columnist for India's Business Standard, reads anything about the American outcry over the outsourcing of jobs to low-wage countries, he blames one root cause: the wide economic disparity between the developed and developing world. "Given the unshakeable viability of the differences in cost structures of different economies," he writes, "it is but natural...

A Matter of More Than Economics

Martin Wolf April 13, 2004
As the United Kingdom and the European Union (EU) opened up to more and more immigrants to satisfy their domestic labor needs, many have started thinking about the implications for such sizable immigration. Martin Wolf, columnist for the Financial Times, says that the choice for more immigration should not just be based on economic incentives, but also on the values of a country's citizens...

Outsourcing, Turned Inside Out

Ken Belson April 11, 2004
While most Americans today have heard about and many already been alarmed by the outsourcing of jobs overseas, some others might not be as worried; those include the employees of South Korean semiconductor company Samsung in Austin, Texas. The company just announced that it would pump another $500 into its Texas plant, adding an additional 300 jobs to its 700-people workforce. Samsung is not...

Globalization Alone Isn't Enough

Stephen Haber April 11, 2004
At a recent Summit of the Americas meeting in Mexico, US President George W. Bush urged Latin American countries to adopt a Free Trade Area of the Americas agreement so that the region could become even more integrated into the global economy. Latin American leaders, however, are cautious. In the 80s and 90s, most Latin American countries opened their economies to foreign trade and investment...

Pentagon Seeks to Use Foreign Airlines

Micheline Maynard April 10, 2004
When the war in Iraq broke out and American troops and equipment were being transported half way across the world to the Middle East, people realized that not all the carriers involved in the transportation were in the US Air Force fleet. Instead, American owned commercial airlines did a large part of the job. Recently, however, the Pentagon announced that it wanted to include foreign airlines...

R & D: India's New Star Industry

Swaminathan S. Anklesaria Aiyar April 10, 2004
American multinational companies are setting up research and development (R & D) centers in India, participating in a new trend in the contemporary era of global capitalism - the outsourcing of production activities.. No longer content to only look overseas for low-wage service sector jobs like call centers, large US corporations are tapping into the technical expertise and specialized...

How Indonesia Should Respond to U.S. Economic Saber Rattling

Patrick Guntensperger April 9, 2004
Recently, the US has begun pursuing a number of threatening trade initiatives meant to end what it calls the "unfair trading practices" of other nations. Indonesia, one of the 55 nations named, is accused of hurting the US economy with excessive trade barriers. According to Jakarta-based business consultant Patrick Guntensperger, the accusations are groundless. To counteract any...