Trump tariff I would wholly endorse (rant)

Welcome to liberal arguments 20 years ago.

 

Well then you missed the boat on stuff like this, when liberals wanted “protections” against Indian call centers and foreign tech visas.

I can imagine maybe some businesses pissing off high profile clients and drawing the line. But for most customers there is no going back. If anything AI hype and evolving technology is going to push this even further (previous businesses that still have real people are going to be like, “you will talk to a robot and you’ll like it”).

I have a credit union and it’s easy to talk to real people. Wouldn’t be surprising to see even organizations like that buy into the AI hype to take over for customer service. Honestly I can see why they do this at this point, esp with the technology getting pretty solid. Almost don’t even need that foreign call center. Most people are morons and 99% of questions can be helped with an AI CSR *if* the AI is good and the interface is good. Whether the 1% is worth it is a cost-benefit decision.

 

What would the tariff be?

 

Not a tariff issue. It would require legal or regulatory reform to change this and if the Dems were to try it, they'd get nailed with the catchall "socialism" pitchforks coming out from the right.

BTW, I have to work with a team of these "offshore" employees at my job and all they do is screw up left and right.

 

Tariffs are taxes levied against imported goods, so I'm struggling to understand how Trump would put a tariff on outsourced customer service centers.* What exactly are they going to tax? The service costs to the businesses that hire these overseas centers? I'm not sure that's feasible.


*I'm not struggling to understand that Trump will totally say that he did it, or MAGA mouth breathers will completely believe him that he actually did something real.

 

That’s the problem with stuff like this.

I remember liberals and labor activists wanting to put a stop to all the H1B1 shenanigans in the early 2000’s. It was bs to have American workers literally train their foreign replacements. I always thought that should get them heavy fines, particularly when it was blatantly rediculous (and technically illegal) like that scenario where they made it so obvious what was happening.

But there was a certain reality that if they didn’t import those H1B1 workers here, the corporations could always set up a tech center or call center overseas and build their operations that way. There was no stopping the overall trend. What is the govt going to do? Cut off communications? Cut off the flow of information in private business? Sounds like something a full commie would do.

 

Again, I'm not sure that's feasible. Banks and other companies aren't going to eat that cost, and they don't have an easy mechanism to pass that expense on to consumers (which is what happens with tariffs). So there's no way in hell they would ever support politicians enacting anything like that. Trump is no more likely to go against the banks on this measure than any other politician.

 

Perhaps OP wasn't alive when George Bush 2 was in office. During that time the Republicans talked about the benefits of outsourcing. The Democrats fought hard against it and try to pass an anti-outsourcing bill, but of course lost. If the Democrats tried to push for it again the right wing would be all over it saying that the left is the thing but a group of socialists. Biden should be the last person that OP is upset with

 

Then why are you sounding more like a Bernie Bro than MAGA with this post?

 

Im with the old school republicans here. Protectionism never works. Heck, even with all the outsourcing of IT over the years we haven’t run high IT unemployment, the opposite actually. Call centers went over seas and will now go to AI.. good thing we dont have lots of call centers anymore.

We have record low unemployment and a shortage of workers. High paid skilled manual factory labor was a dying industry. High paid skilled manual services and repair labor is a growing industry.

It all shifts around to balance out in our extremely flexible economy. We have a pretty good system if people would organize their labor together for better negotiations. Other than that… protecting old ways of working seems unAmerican. Maybe I am wrong though.

 

Wouldn't that be a good thing? Getting a good start on unemployment on the reservations? They would proba.... wait, you were speaking about India the country right?

 

I work in IT and I feel your pain. Trying to get product support over the phone is a nightmare. I dread it. Use the online chat feature where possible.

 

They opened a call center in DeLand and staffed it with about 500 employees pre Covid. It closed it seems that the problem wasn’t the location of the call center it’s that people wanted the call center to actually be able to help and that never happened.