Unions Press Clinton on Outsourcing Of U.S. Jobs

Clinton "believes that we must make sure that we are not allowing other countries to take advantage of American workers and that we do not have policies in place that actually promote outsourcing of American jobs," spokesman Philippe Reines said.

Her rivals for the Democratic nomination have monitored her every comment on the issue. Last year, the India Abroad newspaper reported that she joked to a group of Indian American donors that she could easily win a Senate seat if she were running in the Indian state of Punjab. An aide to her chief foe in the Democratic contest, Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.), parodied those remarks in a document distributed to reporters; it listed her political affiliation as "D-Punjab."

At a recent event in Los Angeles, host Nadadur Vardhan told those gathered that they should support Clinton because "she may shift more jobs to India," according to an Indian news account. Asked about the remarks, Vardhan told The Washington Post: "That's not our goal. Our goal is to support her because she is best for this country."

Obama and former senator John Edwards (N.C.), who trail Clinton in the polls, have sought to attack her record on outsourcing while arguing that they support more direct government intervention to protect U.S. jobs.

Clinton's camp counters that Obama and Edwards have acknowledged that some loss of American jobs is inevitable in a global economy. Edwards, for example, told a New Delhi conference in 2005 that outsourcing was "an economic reality" and "America must act to ensure that it stays strong and adapts . . . to ensure that the American people are better prepared to meet the challenges of the new world." And Obama said just two months ago: "We know that we can't put the forces of globalization back in the bottle. We cannot bring back every job that's been lost."

When Clinton told a union-sponsored debate last month that the nation needed a "better approach" to globalization and trade, Edwards railed against the North American Free Trade Agreement that President Bill Clinton's administration signed in 1993, saying it compromised "millions of jobs." Obama chimed in that "people don't want a cheaper T-shirt if it's costing us jobs."

Clinton recently pleaded with her allies in the Indian American community to press Indian companies to invest more in the United States in return for the jobs they have gained through outsourcing -- or risk a backlash.

"If the United States continues to outsource jobs to India in increasingly large numbers, people will begin to feel insecure and may very well seek more protection against what they view as unfair competition," Clinton told Indian technologists during a July speech in Santa Clara, Calif. "America is not just a marketplace to get a foothold in. It's a place to make lasting investments that will create jobs and economic growth for everyone."

Clinton's positioning on outsourcing dates to the 1990s, when her husband's administration aggressively pursued free trade agreements such as NAFTA that union workers today consider the start of a huge exodus of U.S. jobs to cheaper overseas competition.

During the rise of the Internet, the Clinton administration also distributed temporary-worker visas to hundreds of thousands of Indians who came to the United States for jobs at high-tech companies.

Both Clintons made repeated trips to India -- visits that continued during Hillary Clinton's tenure in the Senate. Between them, Bill and Hillary Clinton have made eight visits to India since 2001, and many more to Indian American groups in the United States.

"Just look back," said Sanjay Puri, who heads the nation's largest Indian American fundraising committee. "The Clintons made a special effort. They went to India. They made a real attempt to reach out to Indian Americans at a time when no one else had done that."