TAMPA, Fla — U.S. President Barack Obama warned Friday Americans did not want an “outsourcing pioneer” in the Oval Office, pouncing on a report that Mitt Romney’s former firm helped ship jobs abroad.
The report, by The Washington Post, threatened to undermine multi-millionaire Romney’s claim that his experience as a venture capitalist equips him uniquely to create jobs in America’s sagging economic recovery.
“Let me tell you, we do not need an outsourcing pioneer in the Oval Office,” Obama said at a campaign rally in the key battleground state of Florida.
“We need a president who will fight for American jobs and fight for American manufacturing. That’s what my plan will do, that’s why I am running for a second term as president of the United States.”
Obama’s camp quickly capitalized on the report, with a conference call with reporters, a campaign video and Obama’s personal remarks, hoping to crank up momentum after several difficult weeks for the president.
“We believe this is a significant moment in this campaign. All of America has learned a little more about the business record Governor Romney is running on,” said Obama campaign senior adviser David Axelrod.
Citing documents filed with U.S. regulators, the Post said Bain Capital, the firm Romney founded and headed for 15 years, invested in companies that led in establishing call centers and manufacturing facilities in other countries.
The report said the private equity firm was involved “early on” as the departure of jobs from the United States was accelerating.
But Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul said the story was “fundamentally flawed” as it did not differentiate between offshoring—sending jobs overseas—and—outsourcing—employing another firm to do work previously done in house.
“Mitt Romney spent 25 years in the real world economy so he understands why jobs come and they go,” Saul said.
“As president, he will implement policies that make it easier and more attractive for companies to create jobs here at home.
“President Obama’s attacks on profit and job creators make it less attractive to create jobs in the U.S.”
Romney has repeatedly accused China of unfairly snapping up U.S. jobs with its economic policies and charged Obama with being soft on Beijing over its alleged currency manipulation.
But Axelrod accused the Republican candidate of recently “repackaging” himself as a “newly minted anti-China warrior” for political gain.
Bain spokesman Alex Stanton was quoted by the Post as defending the company’s practices, saying: “Bain Capital’s business model has always been to build great companies and improve their operations.”
“We have helped the 350 companies in which we have invested, which include over 100 start-up businesses, produce $80 billion of revenue growth in the United States while growing their revenues well over twice as fast as both the S&P and the U.S. economy over the last 28 years.”
The Post story featured two companies: Corporate Software Inc (CSI) and Stream.
The story said CSI once employed U.S. workers to provide services, but by the mid-1990s was setting up call centers outside the country.
CSI merged with another firm to form a company called Stream International Inc and Bain was active in running the firm as a minority shareholder, the Post said, citing Securities and Exchange Commission filings.
Stream, by 1997, operated three tech-support call centers in Europe and was part of a call center joint venture in Japan.
But Romney aides said the call centers abroad were not intended to serve the U.S. market and served foreign markets they were in for language reasons.
They said that Romney left Bain a year before Stream opened an Indian call center.
Another firm cited in the report was Modus Media, which contracted with Microsoft to build software in Australia.
By 1999, Modus was active in outsource packaging and hardware work for IBM, Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard and Dell in Singapore, Taiwan, China and South Korea, as well as European facilities in Ireland and France.
Modus said in 1997 its expansion of outsourcing services took place in close consultation with Bain, the Post reported.
The Romney camp also maintained that the customer support provided to U.S. technology firms by the call centers overseas allowed them to sell products in those markets and create U.S. jobs.
article source: japantoday.com
