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Posted by Harry-Wood in India Destroying Quietly US Economy on July 2nd, 2013
Americans are suffering from unemployment, home foreclosures, factory closures, homelessness, disease and hunger plague the US South and Mississippi Delta.
India continues to steal US jobs right under the noses of American people. Thousands of US IT and Software engineers, Programmers & Technicians are unemployed for more than 3-5 years.
The US Congress is now waking up to the reality of India’s unfair trade practices. Although China is unfairly blamed for such practices, India continues to take US jobs with impunity.
On the other hand, completely oblivious to current unfair practices, President Obama and Secretary John Kerry wine and dine with Indian leaders and promote India as a close US ally.
WASHINGTON, DC – The Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing, and Trade, chaired by Rep. Lee Terry (R-NE), today held a hearing on “A Tangle of Trade Barriers: How India’s Industrial Policy is Hurting U.S. Companies.” The United States and India have a strong and growing trade relationship, with India ranking as the United States’ 13th largest trading partner in 2011. But this important trade partnership is being threatened by emerging discriminatory trade practices and other non-tariff barriers such as localization requirements and policies that violate internationally accepted intellectual property standards.
“Guided by their national manufacturing policy, India has begun engaging in a growing pattern of unfair and discriminatory trade practices which are directly harming U.S. companies in a wide variety of sectors—especially pharmaceuticals, energy technologies, and information and communications technology,” said Terry. “This committee is deeply concerned about the long-term effects these actions may have on U.S. companies and workers.”
Witnesses at today’s hearing highlighted how India’s recent actions are affecting U.S. companies, manufacturers, jobs, and the economy. Many policies, primarily those related to intellectual property, adopted by the government of India over the past two years have raised serious concerns about the future of the U.S.-India trade relationship.
“In 2010, the then-President of India declared the next 10 years to be India’s ‘Decade of Innovation,’” said Mark Elliot, Executive Vice President of Global Intellectual Property Center at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. “Unfortunately, India’s policies are inconsistent with their former President’s statement. Over the last 18 months, particular policy, regulatory, and legal decisions have deteriorated their IP system, making India an outlier in the international community.”
Roy Waldron, Chief Intellectual Property Officer for Pfizer Inc., expressed that India’s unfair practices have undermined Pfizer’s “ability to innovate, create jobs and provide faster access to life-saving medicines.” He explained that India’s abuse of patents has had a negative effect on Pfizer’s ability to recoup research and development costs, often exceeding $1 billion. “Since early 2012, India’s policies and actions have undermined patent rights for at least nine innovative medicines. Many of these medicines have received patent protection in most countries across the world, suggesting that India is an outlier in recognizing and enforcing patent rights,” said Waldron. “This is not only creating significant uncertainty in the market but it also undermines our ability to compete fairly in India, and our willingness to invest there.”
Linda Menghetti Dempsey, National Association of Manufacturers Vice President of International Economic Affairs, explained, “Manufacturers in the United States have faced challenges in the Indian market – from very high tariffs and weak intellectual property protection and enforcement to complex and expensive regulatory processes. … Over the past year and a half, we have seen a damaging pattern of actions in India that are discriminating against U.S. exports of a wide array of goods. These actions have no other purpose but to favor India’s domestic corporations in strategic state-favored and state-advantaged sectors at the expense of manufacturing and jobs in the United States.” Recently, NAM, along with 16 other trade organizations, formed the Alliance for Fair Trade with India to press upon the importance to the Obama administration the need to address unfair trade practices with the government of India. “I’m deeply disturbed by the turn of events in India’s intellectual property system,” added full committee Ch
airman Fred Upton (R-MI). “IP-intensive industries contribute over $5 trillion to our economy and support a total of 40 million American jobs. These incursions on their intellectual property rights hurt their bottom line and thus their ability to contribute to our economy and job market – something we cannot take for granted, especially in this fragile economic time.”
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Posted by Dr. Salman in India Destroying Quietly US Economy on May 10th, 2013
Signs of our economic decline are everywhere. From closed down manufacturing plants to our high unemployment numbers, it is no secret that there is something very wrong going on in our country. One of the primary culprits behind our economic crisis? “Free trade.” It is our unfair “free trade” agreements with other countries such as India that have led to our current crisis. India’s predatory trading practices are resulting in the off-shoring and outsourcing of U.S. jo
bs through the use of visas, and the U.S. is facing an alarming decline in high-paying, professional jobs here at home.
India has spent much of its existence as one of the richest countries in the world. However, as they became colonized during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, that wealth dissipated to be replaced with crushing poverty. The British Empire’s implementation of “free trade” into India’s economy did nothing to combat the poverty; in fact, it fueled it. As J.R. Martin explains in his book, Selling U.S. Out, “during the span in which colonization and the implementation of ‘free trade’ occurred, India was transformed from an exporter of processed goods to being an exporter of raw materials and an importer of manufactured goods”—just like what is happening with the “free trade” agreements between the United States and China.
JOBLESS AMERICANS IN MILLIONS
India underwent a change soon after the fall of the Iron Curtain and collapse of the Soviet Union, though. India became closer to the U.S. and thus began to steer their economic practices towards capitalism. In the 1990s, they experienced full-blown economic liberalization that resulted in a new national economic strategy that has proven disastrous for the U.S. economy.
Part of India’s new national economic strategy was much like the predatory trade practices employed by nations like China and Japan. It was and still is a strategy that takes advantage of our open markets and lack of “free trade” barriers. While our trade relations with China and Japan have resulted in the loss of manufacturing jobs, trade with India is resulting in the loss and outsourcing of higher paying, professional services jobs. J.R. Martin eloquently points out that “at the center of India’s national economic strategy is the development of information technology (IT) and business process outsourcing (BPO) industries by primarily targeting U.S. corporations and government entities—replacing their American workforce with lower-cost Indian workers.”
The primary tool that India is employing as one of their predatory trade practices against us is the use of visas—the L-1 and H-1B visas, to be exact. As J.R. Martin explains it, “these visas are the golden tickets to America for low-cost foreign workers and they are easily obtained by U.S. and foreign-owned corporations from the U.S. government. They are used as tools to replace millions of American workers with low cost foreign workers.” Ultimately, these visas are fueling the outsourcing of our valuable businesses and assets to India.
With U.S. unemployment numbers as high as they are, the government needs to stop issuing the L-1 and H-1B visas responsible for taking good paying jobs away from United States citizens. Call your congressperson and ask what they’re doing to stop the issuing of these visas and the outsourcing of our businesses to India. We cannot continue to stand by and do nothing while foreign entities continue to strip jobs and resources from our country. If we do so, there will soon be nothing left for foreign entities to take!
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