A lot of talk about outsourcing in the news these days. CNS News explains who has the real record of outsourcing.
Excerpt:
The Obama administration allowed millions of dollars in federal stimulus funds to go to foreign companies, despite recent statements by President Barack Obama that he opposes “shipping jobs overseas.”
[…]Obama’s 2009 economic stimulus spending law–the $787 billion American Recovery and Reivnestment Act–gave millions of federal dollars to foreign companies or funded domestic companies that built factories in foreign countries or bought foreign products.
For example, there is the North Carolina LED manufacturer Cree Inc. Cree was awarded $39 million through a stimulus-funded tax credit program in January 2010. However, half of the company’s employees are in China and the company opened a manufacturing plant in Huizhou City, China in November 2009, according to an article in the industry publication LEDs Magazine.
[…]Another example of stimulus outsourcing is Japanese wind energy firm Eurus Energy, whose U.S. subsidiary, Eurus Energy America, received $91 million in stimulus funds to build a wind farm in Texas, according to a 2010 report from American University. That wind farm reportedly was built with wind turbines manufactured by another Japanese company – Mitsubishi.
“Eurus Energy America, the U.S. subsidiary of a Japanese firm, received $91 million in stimulus money for its Bull Creek wind farm in Texas. The farm consists of 180 Mitsubishi turbines,” the American University report said.
Eurus told American University that the wind farm was actually built by British firm RES Americas and is now being run by EnXco, an American subsidiary of the French energy firm EDF Energies Nouvelles.
[…]Another example of the Obama administration funding foreign companies is a $337 million loan guarantee from the Department of Energy’s green energy lending program.
That loan went to California energy firm Sempra Energy for a solar power array in Arizona. However, according to a Feb. 4, 2011 New York Times report, Sempra Energy bought its solar panels from the Chinese firm Suntech.
The project, known as Mesquite Solar 1, reportedly used 800,000 of the Chinese solar panels.
Perhaps the best-known example of Obama administration funding of foreign companies is its $500-million loan guarantee to Finnish automaker Fisker Automotive. That loan, part of the Energy Department’s electric vehicle lending program, was made to help Fisker establish a U.S. manufacturing presence.
However, the company never established an American factory, choosing instead to shutter its U.S. operations and continue building cars in Finland.
But that’s not all.
Consider this post from Hans Bader, which further assesses Obama’s record on outsourcing.
Excerpt: (links removed)
“79 percent” of all green-jobs funding in Obama’s $800 billion stimulus package went to foreign companies, with the largest payment going to a bankrupt Australian company. For example, the Obama Administration spent $1.6 billion on Chinese and other foreign wind power. The practical effect of those subsidies was to outsource American jobs. ABC News reported on the subsidies for Chinese wind turbines contained in the stimulus package:Despite all the talk of green jobs, the overwhelming majority of stimulus money spent on wind power has gone to foreign companies, according to a new report by the Investigative Reporting Workshop at the American University’s School of Communication in Washington, D.C.
Nearly $2 billion . . . has been spent on wind power. . .But the study found that nearly 80 percent of that money has gone to foreign manufacturers of wind turbines.
“Most of the jobs are going overseas,” said Russ Choma at the Investigative Reporting Workshop. He analyzed which foreign firms had accepted the most stimulus money. “According to our estimates, about 6,000 jobs have been created overseas, and maybe a couple hundred have been created in the U.S.” Even with the infusion of so much stimulus money, a recent report by American Wind Energy Association showed a drop in U.S. wind manufacturing jobs last year.
The stimulus package also showered money on left-wing community organizers and liberal lobbying groups.
Earlier, NewsMax reported on a $2 billion subsidized loan by the U.S. government to a Brazilian oil company:
Gulf Oil CEO Joe Petrowski says President Barack Obama’s weekend comments in Brazil that the United States looks forward to purchasing oil drilled for offshore by that nation “is rather puzzling,” and “hypocritical” as his administration has imposed a virtual moratorium on domestic drilling. The signal to purchase more foreign oil comes after the U.S. Export-Import Bank invested more than $2 billion with Brazil’s state-owned oil company, Petrobras, to finance exploration.
The CEO of General Electric, which has received government “green jobs” money, is a close Obama advisor. GE has been busy outsourcing American jobs, eliminating a fifth of its U.S. workforce since 2002. GE made $14.2 billion in profits in 2010, but paid no taxes at all, even though America’s corporate tax rates are among the highest in the world. Indeed, GE actually received a tax benefit of $3.2 billion from the government in 2010, and received a preferential bailout at taxpayer expense.
That post goes on and on and on and on like that. Obama likes to “spread the wealth around”, remember?
What causes outsourcing? When you have the highest corporate tax rate in the world – that causes outsourcing. When you keep piling on regulations and regulations onto businesses, from Obamacare to Dodd-Frank – that causes outsourcing. When you take money collected from taxes paid by American businesses and hand it out to foreign companies owned by Democrat-allies – that causes outsourcing. When you block energy companies from developing energy here at home – that causes outsourcing.
UPDATE: I put millions in the post title, but it’s actually billions. At least $29 billion.
WINTERY KNIGHT 