Joe Biden's inflation plan upends thinking on jobs sent overseas

President Joe Biden has a solution for high inflation that seems counterintuitive: Bring factory jobs back to the US. This challenges a decades-long argument that employers moved jobs abroad to lower their costs by relying on cheaper workers.

The trend contributed to the loss of 6.8 million US manufacturing jobs, but it also translated into lower prices for consumers and put downward pressure on inflation in ways that kept broader economic growth going. 

It was a trade-off that many corporate and political leaders were privately comfortable making. That’s because proponents of outsourcing failed to consider the costs of frequent global supply chain disruptions.

Recent disruptions have included the Covid-19 pandemic, shortages of basic goods like semiconductors, destructive storms and wildfires and, now, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which has sent oil prices soaring.

Biden says the federal government can either pull back on support and cause wages and growth to cool, or it can get rid of the pressure points that can lead to inflation.