WASHINGTON (Reuters) ? President Barack Obama, under election-year pressure to show voters he is tackling high unemployment, said on Wednesday he will soon roll out new tax proposals to encourage U.S. companies to keep jobs at home instead of outsourcing them overseas.
Highlighting what the White House touts as a growing trend but which some economists say has yet to gather much steam, Obama put the focus on businesses that have chosen to "insource" jobs and urged others to follow their lead.
"In the next few weeks, I will put forward new tax proposals that reward companies that choose to bring jobs home and invest in America and we're going to eliminate tax breaks for companies that are moving jobs overseas," Obama told business leaders.
The White House declined to give specifics about the new ideas but repeated its call for Congress to enact some of those already put forth, including making a research and development tax credit permanent, allowing businesses to write off new equipment and providing a hiring credit for adding new workers.
Any new tax initiatives would require approval by Congress, where the Democratic president faces continued stiff resistance on tax policy from his Republican foes.
Obama was hosting a White House forum with executives on "Insourcing American Jobs," a message that could resonate with middle-class voters and unionized workers whose support he will need to win re-election in November.
His push for corporate America to return more jobs to U.S. soil after years of hiring workers in lower-wage countries like China and India ties in with the increasingly populist theme of his re-election campaign.
The timing of Obama's new effort, a day after Mitt Romney won New Hampshire's Republican presidential primary election, could also be seen as a veiled swipe at the frontrunner vying to face him in the general election.
Before seeking public office, Romney headed investment firm Bain Capital that took over distressed companies and sometimes outsourced production to China and other emerging markets. The former Massachusetts governor insists his business experience will help him revive the U.S. economy.
At the White House, Obama pressed companies to invest and hire more in the United States instead of moving jobs overseas, saying "labor costs are going up in places like China" while U.S. workers are becoming more productive.
CARROT-AND-STICK APPROACH?
Several lobbyists and congressional aides said Obama would likely revive many of his earlier international tax proposals.
"I'd envision some type of carrot-and-stick approach that offers tax incentives to firms that keep jobs here while penalizing firms that outsource," said Greg Valliere, an analyst at the Potomac Research Group.
For several years, Obama has proposed closing what he calls tax loopholes used by multinational firms, including those restricting the use of foreign tax credits, and preventing companies from deferring taxes on income earned abroad.
The administration had been drafting revisions to just the corporate side of the tax code but largely abandoned the effort over the past year after complaints that the tax code needs a massive overhaul and that many businesses file as individuals.
Executives from more than a dozen firms attended the meeting, including padlock maker Master Lock, furniture company Lincolnton Furniture, software application developer GalaxE Solutions and chemicals giant DuPont.
"What the companies represented here today ... have in common is that they're part of a hopeful trend," Obama said. "They're bringing jobs back to America. You've heard of outsourcing. Well, these companies are insourcing."
But those companies are credited so far with bringing back only modest numbers of jobs from overseas as the U.S. economy is still struggling to heal after the worst recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
While rising costs in emerging markets have prompted some U.S. firms to rethink their outsourcing strategy, questions remain whether it will become enough of a trend to start reversing decades of shipping U.S. jobs overseas.
"You don't see a lot of evidence of it happening in a big way just yet," said Michael Mandel, chief economic strategist for the Progressive Policy Institute in Washington.
He said a key obstacle was a lack of data comparing competitive advantages and disadvantages of operating in the United States versus foreign markets and he urged Obama to order the Labor Department to conduct studies to fill the gap.
The issue resonates strongly in Midwest industrial states such as Ohio and Michigan that have been hit hard by the 2007-2009 economic crisis and by years of shrinkage in manufacturing jobs. Those states are battlegrounds that are vital to Obama's re-election hopes.
Republicans vying to challenge Obama in November have hammered him over his economic stewardship, contending that his regulatory policies - including new rules for the financial sector and the overhaul of the healthcare system - have discouraged investment and hampered job creation.
(Additional reporting By Kevin Drawbaugh and Kim Dixon; Editing by John O'Callaghan)
nl mvp nl mvp verlander verlander justin verlander pepper spraying cop pepper spraying cop
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.