America’s economic engine is compromised. Forces at work over the last 30 years have sapped our nation’s vitality. How did it happen?

The frenzy of activity to source products from foreign factories gained mass and velocity through the 1990s and into the 2000s. First no-tech and low-tech products, then services, and finally high-tech products and services. The practice of outsourcing gained respectability and attracted legions of global sourcing specialists.

Today global sourcing is thought of by its practitioners as an “industry” unto itself. There are the International Association of Outsourcing Professionals, the Sourcing Interests Group and the Global Sourcing Council, to name a few of the organizations whose mission is to promote the movement of work from the United States to other countries.

It is an industry that works hard, every day, to take work and jobs out of America’s economic base. And yet, these global sourcing specialists are not solely to blame. They are merely agents of change; complicit with the managers of the clients they serve.

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