The Toomey camp shrugs off the attack, saying that the Republican's support of trade has helped Pennsylvania's economy grow and helped thousand of businesses and farms in the state who rely on exporting their goods and services around the world. The campaign also said that former President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, supported China's entrance into the World Trade Organization.
Meanwhile, the Republican National Congressional Committee is running at least 10 ads that hammer incumbent Democrats for supporting the $812 billion stimulus package that included money for grants that went to green-energy jobs in China.
"Why did Tim Walz vote for a bill that allowed more than $1.5 billion to go to companies overseas?" a narrator asks in an ad running in Minnesota's 1st Congressional District, which Mr. Walz represents. "Walz helped create jobs in China, and we paid for it."
The political fight is likely to increase. Democratic strategists James Carville and Stanley Greenberg last week advised candidates to focus on the "offshoring" debate after they found in a survey that fair-trade arguments could help Democrats avoid losses in November. In a memo, they implored Democrats to attack Republicans for supporting free-trade agreements with Colombia, Panama and South Korea and protecting "the loophole for companies outsourcing American jobs."
It also encouraged them to say, "I have a different approach, to give tax breaks for small businesses that hire workers and give tax subsidies for companies that create jobs right here in America."
Meanwhile, the AFL-CIO has created a job-tracker database that it says lists on more than 400,000 corporations that have exported jobs, violated health and safety codes or engaged in discriminatory or other illegal practices.
The ongoing debate overlooks the fact that most economists generally agree that the decline of American manufacturing and the increase in white-collar jobs relocating offshore are a natural step in embracing the modern global economy.
"All you have to do is look at the price tags of the stuff that comes from Asia, specifically China, and compare that with what it was five or 10 years ago," Mr. Montgomery said. "That benefit is spread across larger number of people than just ones who are directly affected by their job moving to China."
Mr. Montgomery estimates that no more than 500,000 of the 8 million jobs lost since the start of the recession are attributable to offshoring.
The issue of outsourcing started gaining attention in the 1970s when manufacturing jobs started migrating to countries such as Taiwan and Mexico, where labor was cheaper.
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