Obama’s record on outsourcing draws criticism from the left

Barack Obama promised voters four years ago that he would work to slow the outflow of American jobs to other countries, proposing to revamp a federal tax code that encourages companies to maintain overseas operations.

Obama as president has continued to call for rewriting the rules that allow U.S. corporations to avoid paying taxes for a time on income generated overseas.

But the broad tax changes have not happened.

While White House officials say they have been waiting on Congress to act, Obama’s critics, primarily on the political left, say he has repeatedly failed in other ways to protect American jobs from being moved overseas. They point to a range of actions they say he should have taken: confronting China, reining in unfettered trade and reworking a U.S. visa program that critics say ends up sending high-tech jobs abroad.

The issue of overseas outsourcing has returned to the center of the presidential campaign, with Obama hammering the record of Mitt Romney’s financial company. The debate intensified in recent weeks with Obama’s campaign attacking his Republican rival after a Washington Post article reported that Romney’s private-equity firm, Bain Capital, had invested in companies that specialized in helping other firms relocate work overseas.

During his run for president in 2008, Obama promised to “end those tax breaks to companies that ship jobs overseas.” It was a pledge he made repeatedly on the campaign trail.

Obama has continued to propose the tax rewrite during his presidency, but only this year did he put it in the spotlight. In his State of the Union address in January, he unveiled his most ambitious plan yet to overhaul the tax code and discourage the offshoring of U.S. jobs. The proposal’s centerpiece was a minimum tax on global corporate profits that Obama has continued to tout.

But neither Democrats in the Senate nor Republicans in the House have taken up the measure.

White House officials say they are pushing Congress to bring the issue up for a vote before the August recess. It remains unclear whether lawmakers will do so. The tax rules could be addressed during negotiations over a broader overhaul of the tax code, which is unlikely to occur until after the November election.

“We laid them out in a very high-profile way,” said senior White House economic adviser Jason Furman. “Now for broad reform, you need Congress. Everybody acknowledges that substantive tax reform takes time to accomplish.”

American jobs have been flowing overseas for years. While the dynamic hurts groups of workers, it can lead to less-expensive goods and services for American consumers and can produce more-advanced American industries to replace old ones.

His aides say Obama has enforced U.S. trade laws far more aggressively than his predecessor, President George W. Bush, and sought to erect tariffs to protect American workers in the tire industry and force China to stop hoarding raw material used in high-tech manufacturing. Administration officials also say Obama has used his bully pulpit, pressuring U.S. employers to keep jobs in the country.