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"Bully" Trump's Tariffs Can't Stop India's High-Skilled Job Gains - so America Loses Again [1]
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Date: 2025-03-26
In a futile effort to level the US’s balance of payments with our trading partners, “Stuck-in-the-past” mercantilist Trump says he will wield tariffs to bring manufacturing jobs back to the United States. But like King Canute, his efforts are doomed to failure. This NY Times report discusses how American (and other international) firms are taking the “remote worker” idea to a whole new level —
India Is on a Hiring Binge That Trump’s Tariffs Can’t Stop
An abundance of motivated young professionals is luring American businesses to base their global operations in Indian cities.
Under President Trump, the United States is upending some of its most important trading partnerships. He is particularly irritated by the $46 billion U.S. deficit in the trade of goods with India ... But Mr. Trump’s stated policy solutions — higher U.S. tariffs meant to force India to lower its trade barriers, and the deportations of immigrants — will do nothing to slow the evolution of the long partnership that binds together American companies looking for skilled workers overseas and India’s abundant pool of labor ... the American economy needs more skilled workers.
Now many American companies are finding those workers in India.
There are 1.9 million people in India working for foreign companies, with 600,000 to 900,000 more expected to join them by 2030 … Together, the offshore business centers in India earned about $65 billion last year, more than the value of American imports to India. By 2030, they are expected to earn $100 billion or more.
… American companies are assembling their work forces in India mainly because it has become difficult to find the right kind of workers in the United States. Studies find that a third of all new [US] engineering jobs go unfilled, while nearly 1.2 million Indians graduate with engineering degrees every year. Lower-wage American workers, who lost jobs as manufacturing work shifted to Asia, have been stranded without retraining.
Deborah Kops, the managing principal of Sourcing Change, has been working on this kind of business, especially in India, since the early 1990s … “We’ve got an inexorable trend right now, where enterprises understand that you can globalize the work,” Ms. Kops said. She has tried setting up global centers within the United States but says that “ we just don’t have the education engine” to staff them .
The biggest problem the US faces is the mismatch between low-skilled workers’ abilities and the needs of a modern workforce. As manufacturing moves toward higher automation, this gap will grow. The Federal Department of Education could play a key role in the retraining needed, but Trump doesn’t see that.
The NY Times says, “All of Trump’s levies so far focus on imports and don’t touch this part of the economy.
“Maybe Trump won’t notice. These high-wage, education-intensive positions aren’t the manufacturing jobs he promised to bring back.”
Or - bully that he is - perhaps it’s not really about solving the balance of payments problem at all. Maybe he is simply enjoying his power to inflict economic pain.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/26/business/india-jobs-global-capability-center.html?unlocked_article_code=1.604.XobI.1K57n11wlv-F&smid=url-share
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