S. Ramadorai, the chief executive of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), the biggest offshore outsourcing company in India, has told reporters at an OECD conference that the offshore outsourcing market is slowing down.

Ramadorai was talking to journalists at the OECD ministerial meeting on the future of the internet economy. He predicted that the industry in India would grow by 20-22 per cent this coming year – compared to about 25 per cent last year.

That’s still not bad, but what I find interesting is that everyone in the industry seems to be talking up the opportunities for offshoring in a recession. Most of the Indian offshoring companies are talking about the opportunities presented by a more cost-conscious business environment. So how come TCS is taking the opposite view?

After all the excitement in the US regarding who is going to stand in the Presidential election this year as the Democratic nominee, it’s only fair to wonder what the candidates might think about offshore outsourcing. After all, Hillary Clinton has long been on record as a strong supporter of investment in the US by Asian companies, but now she is out of the race.

The presumptive candidate for the Democrats, Barack Obama, talked on Monday to an audience in Raleigh, North Carolina, about the subject – so we have an idea what his side of the house feels about the subject.

The basic message from Obama is that you can’t fight globalisation. You can’t stop US companies working with people overseas.

“Revolutions in communication and technology have sent jobs wherever there's an internet connection; that have forced children in Raleigh and Boston to compete for those jobs with children in Bangalore and Beijing,” he said.

So the internet takes most of the blame, but he has acknowledged that this access to global resource does increase competition – more than ever before, US workers need to compete with others.

Obama has a suggested short and long-term policy plan that involves training, education and equipping workers for the more competitive and innovative workplace of the future. He also savagely attacked the Republican candidate John McCain, suggesting that he had nothing to offer voters beyond an endorsement of the policies of the present Bush administration.

Clearly a political strategy that attaches McCain to the washed-up legacy of George Bush is something we are going to hear more of from Obama over the coming months, but to be fair to McCain I have yet to hear him talking on this subject. Perhaps he might make some statements this week now that Obama has chosen to fight him on the outsourcing and globalisation agenda.

I hope so, because this was a major campaign issue back in 2004. To hear Obama talking about changes to education, training plans, and support programmes demonstrates a greater maturity than the debate four years ago – where offshoring was something that the legislators believed could just be banned.

Obama is right to take a more pragmatic view. We aren’t talking about offshoring anymore. The way companies do business has entirely changed because of global networks, and US companies are leading that change. Let’s hope the Republican candidate takes a similar view so whoever becomes the next President of the USA will start focusing on the long-term issue of equipping US workers for the future.