Jobs from US are outsourced to India? Bah!

The notion that jobs from America are being outsourced to India is "vastly exaggerated", a top Obama administration official has said, adding Indo-US trade and economic relationship is a two-way process and not heavily tilted towards any one.

"I think that is vastly exaggerated," Robert D Hormats, the Under Secretary of State for Economic, Energy and Agricultural Affairs said at a discussion here when Bob Schieffer, anchor of the CBS News "Face The Nation", asked him about the general impression about India.

"To a lot of Americans, India is the place where American jobs are simply outsourced. We all know about the telephones and all of that. What is that situation?" Schieffer asked.

"People watch the TV show "Outsourced" and they see this. But what is not commonly realised is the fact, first of all, that a great deal of trade goes on the export side.

India has increased its imports from the US by 17 per cent over the last 12 months.

. . .

Indian investment here is beginning to pick up. A number of big Indian companies are investing here, which creates a considerable number of jobs in this country," Hormats said.

"The other thing that's interesting is India's growth model is a lot more balanced than the growth models of many other countries.

India is not a country whose development model, whose growth model, is based on export-led growth, as is the case with some countries further to the east of India, which is very different," he said adding that India has a more balanced model.

. . .

The trade is not way out of balance between exports and imports, from a global point of view. And it is not a huge exporter of manufactured goods to the United States, which compete with manufactured goods in this country, he said.

"So when you look at what they export and you look at the relative balance between imports and exports, it does not cause the same kinds of problems that people attribute to some other countries or raise the same kinds of issues that people attribute to other countries," Hormats argued.

"In addition to that, there is a lot of cooperation between American companies and Indian companies. India has what they call "frugal innovation or innovation where they develop a new kind of product with sort of lower price points. But they work very closely with American companies," he said.