Obama Proposes Tax Incentives for Companies That Bring Back Overseas Jobs

What after 20 years of the US Government, affiliated "think tanks", CFR, etc promoting and incentivizing US corporate giants to offshore tens of millions of manufacturing, IT and back office functions from the Western world to the East, Obama has a Duh! moment and realizes that an economy needs high paying jobs to function and grow. Well mate it is too late! but I am sure you are only saying it to get re-elected, none of your buddies would ever let you follow though on such a plan.

Bit of background on my part, in the early 90's I helped move an IT dept of a Hong Kong based company to low cost / high skilled Australia. Australia provided low cost land to build a new data centre, world class communication links and most importantly a highly skilled workforce, which reduced labour requirements, costly human errors and system outages. In the 2000's the company outsourced it's IT dept to a US company to run, which in turn offshored it to low cost / low skilled Communist China. They did this even though the US company's economy of scale meant they could have continued to run it from Australia for an effective zero labour cost. When this was pointed out to US management they responded that they wanted it sent to China regardless of any cost or quality concerns.

------ / -----

From Bloomberg:

President Barack Obama says he will propose new tax incentives to reward companies that invest in U.S. expansion or bring back jobs from overseas and elimination of tax breaks to companies that move jobs outside the country.

At a White House forum this afternoon with representatives from more than a dozen companies, including Ford Motor Co. and Intel Corp., Obama said more must be done to encourage business investment and job creation.

The tax initiatives will be part of the fiscal 2013 budget plan that is set to be sent to Congress the first week of February. The White House didn’t release details. Obama also plans to propose adding $12 million for a program to promote foreign direct investment in the U.S. and work with state and local governments to attract businesses.

The companies at the event are among those that have decided to return jobs from overseas or increase their U.S. operations.

“We are in a unique moment, an inflection point, a period where we’ve got the opportunity for those jobs to come back,” Obama said in his remarks to the group at the White House. “The business leaders in this room, they’re ahead of the curve. They recognize it.”......read more