Exporting America: Why Corporate Greed Is Shipping American Jobs Overseas [Hardcover]

Lou Dobbs (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 30, 2004

Renowned business journalist and CNN anchor Dobbs takes aim at the executives and politicians who profit by exporting U.S. jobs overseas and shows readers what they can do to save not only their own careers, but the American way of life.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

"How can our politicians call trade 'free' when year after year we sustain runaway trade deficits and the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs?" Is that pro-worker, left-wing moviemaker Michael Moore speaking? Hardly. Try Lou Dobbs, host of the Lou Dobbs Tonight show on CNN and self-proclaimed "lifelong Republican" on the soapbox against the whole notion of free trade. The issue of American corporations moving overseas in pursuit of cheap labor has become a rallying cry for the otherwise conservative business journalist, and through his national TV show, he has become a lightning rod of controversy for speaking out against it, having been called everything from a protectionist to a communist. True, the book's publication coincides with a hot presidential race, yet Dobbs doesn't see either side as having the answer (Clinton, after all, signed NAFTA into law). Instead, after deftly laying out the problems, Dobbs thankfully offers sound ideas for reversing the course that he thinks will lead to losing another 14 million jobs to outsourcing. A tightly written account of an important economic issue. Mary Frances Wilkens
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: Business Plus; 1ST edition (August 30, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0446577448
• ISBN-13: 978-0446577441
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (90 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,088,768 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

89 of 105 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars It Makes You Think, September 5, 2004

By 

T. Hooper "thdizzy" (Osaka, Japan) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Exporting America: Why Corporate Greed Is Shipping American Jobs Overseas (Hardcover)

Lou Dobbs goes on the attack against corporate America. In this book, he outlines the dangers of the rampant outsourcing that American corporations are doing. By exporting white collar jobs to countries such as India and China, these corporations are undermining American society. In fact, it's a betrayal of the American worker. When manufacturing jobs went overseas, corporate America promised their workers that they would have more opportunities to get higher paying white collar jobs. Well, now those white collar jobs are disappearing, and there aren't any other jobs to turn to other than low paying jobs such as waiter, janitor, and sales clerk at Walmart. If the American worker is forced to compete with the low wages of third world nations, the standard of living in America will be pushed closer to a third world level due to this competition. Only the corporate elite will prosper in this new world order of wage slavery. These corpoate elites don't pay into the tax base, and neither to their foreign workers. With the declining tax base, the American government goes further into debt. All it would take is for a country like Saudi Arabia to dump it's reserves in dollars to destroy the American economy. It's a very precarious situation. This book does a good job of presenting this issue. The reason I give this book four stars instead of five is that it is a little short. It's doesn't give enough case studies to illustrate it's points, and even though it's short, it tends to repeat itself sometimes. However, I do believe this is a good introduction to the issue. Check it out.

39 of 46 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Insightful, prophetic and though provoking read by a True American Patriot., January 26, 2006

By 

skip1047 "Skip" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Exporting America: Why Corporate Greed Is Shipping American Jobs Overseas (Hardcover)

Many of the "Reviews" of "Exporting America..." seem to be attacking the man, Lou Dobbs, and his admittedly controversial socioeconomic and political opinions rather than the content and import of the book being reviewed. The book has proven itself to be ahead of its time, extraordinarily insightful and disturbing accurate at predicting future events and trends. In his book, Lou had taken his many years as a financial analyst and broadcaster and used these experiences as the foundation for presenting a comprehensive view of the economic and socioeconomic problems presently facing the USA and its leaders. Who can argue with Lou's position on the ultimate dangers of outsourcing following the recent announced layoffs by GM and Ford, totaling approximately 55,000 Middle American, blue collar workers? Where are these jobs going? Of course, they are being outsourced overseas! Lou is a courageous and patriotic American, doing his best each day to salvage what opportunity remains for the USA to hold on to its quickly fading position as the world's economic, military, and moral leader. On his CNN broadcast of June 8, 2002, Lou coined the phrase "War against islamists" and its derivatives by saying "We are fighting a war against extreme, radical Muslims, who are trying to destroy us, our society, our economy, our way of life. They're called Islamists -- not Muslims or Islamics -- Islamists. They are the enemy." CNN later commented, "Because Lou serves as a commentator and analyst, as well as anchor of his show, he may express his opinion on this subject and use the phrase 'war against Islamists.'" Just how "On Target" Lou was with this insightful analysis has been borne out by the fact that even PRESIDENT BUSH has recently adopted this language and position. Lou is not afraid to take on powerful special interest groups, politicians, religious groups and others advocating their dangerous agenda. These groups are leading the USA down the path to mediocrity. Thank goodness for Lou Dobbs! The USA needs more Patriots like Lou Dobbs!

120 of 149 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Provokes, Overlooks, Inspires, Read Reviews First,, Then Buy, September 3, 2004

By 

Robert D. Steele (Oakton, VA United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Exporting America: Why Corporate Greed Is Shipping American Jobs Overseas (Hardcover)

Edited 20 Dec 07 to add links.

I've said for some time now that Amazon is a virtual university, and that I consider the reviews of any book to be at least the equal of the book as educational material. This certainly applies to the reviews inspired by this provocative book by Lou Dobbs, and I give both the book, and the reviews, high marks when taken together.

It is clear that Lou Dobbs is both an intelligent patriot, and somewhat simplistic in his presentation. This does not diminish the value of what he has offered us, but we have to frame it in the right way: this is a one hour read, from Boston to DC, and needs to seen in the context of my other 1000+ reviews of national security non-fiction.

Dobbs does take on added importance, together with Stephen Flynn's book, America the Vulnerable: How Our Government Is Failing to Protect Us from Terrorism, because Dobbs helps us understand that we do not have a proper trade strategy nor a related demographic and employment strategy. To those who would say "let the free market do its work" I would point out that the free market would not raise national armies, collect taxes, or provide social security. Some things have to be done by the Nation and its State governments, and one of those "duties" is to conserve and enhance national power from "the bottom up", meaning the population's ability to produce and to fight.

There is a related concern: when goods are created by foreign workers earning $1 per hour, instead of US workers earning $15 per hour (as discussed on page 11), two bad things happen: the first is that the goods tend to be less lasting in nature--more throw-away products that thus consume precious metal, plastic, etc (this is less applicable in IT, where Indian programmers cost 1/10th and are as good or better than US programmers); and second, they have to be transported, using tons of oil and other fuels. These are called "trade-offs." I'm not an economist, but I do believe that in a limited growth natural environment, and in an unstable world, it makes sense to localize or regionalize as much of your agricultural, light manufacturing, and energy production as possible. Sustainable environments range from local to global, but they start with the local.

The author spends some time identifying and negating twelve "myths" associated with outsourcing jobs, and I for one find these valuable, and would consider any politician unable to address the points that Dobbs makes to be unqualified to be President (I am mindful of the possibility that no one qualified to be President might actually be able to earn the nomination).

Finally, and this is a criticism of Dobbs, I think he misses the main point, and it is one that is made very ably by Peter Peterson in "Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It as well as others writing about democracy: there is no single issue or challenge facing America that could not be more ably addressed if the people were informed and engaged and actually had the power to vote on the matter. Although Dobbs notes, as does Peterson (who is Chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations, and hence no liberal), that corporate America, and the two "main parties", no longer represent America or American labor or the American voter, he does not focus on this as the core issue. This in my view *is* the key issue. When Dobbs asks America to vote on CNN, as he did last night, and the only issues he presents are a few foreign/defense versus economic/health issues, I ask myself: what doesn't he understand? These are dog on dog issues. The "dog-catcher" issue in America is this: does our vote count, not only in politics, but in the workplace? The answer is NO, and around that answer, we should be building a popular revolution that demands a Constitutional Convention and a completely open election in 2006. We need to churn Congress, join labor unions, and take back the power.

Newer books by Lou Dobbs, with reviews:
Independents Day: Awakening the American Spirit
War on the Middle Class: How the Government, Big Business, and Special Interest Groups Are Waging War onthe American Dream and How to Fight Back

Other books that complement his earnest populist investigative journalist campaign to be an advocate for We the People:
Day of Reckoning: How Hubris, Ideology, and Greed Are Tearing America Apart
State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America
Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency
The Global Class War: How America's Bipartisan Elite Lost Our Future - and What It Will Take to Win It Back
The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism: How the Financial System Underminded Social Ideals, Damaged Trust in the Markets, Robbed Investors of Trillions - and What to Do About It