OUTCOME OF US ELECTION 2012 STRONGLY INFLUENCED BY JOBS AND SUPPLY CHAIN ISSUE

US has 25% of China’s population but double the GDP

Despite the rapid growth of BRIC countries and the shift of economic power to the Far East, the US is still an important player in the global economy. Behind China and India the US remains the world’s third most populous nation, even if it does trail in someway behind with around 315 million people – about 25% of the Chinese total; however, rated by four key authorities, US economic output is the world’s highest with double the GDP of China.

This week’s US election was a close run thing. When all the stats are confirmed only around 2% of the popular vote (those cast by ordinary voters) will separate the candidates. With many states predictably aligned as either Democrat or Republican the result of the election remains in the hands of a small number of swing states. Ohio is seen as something of a bell-weather state, as now, for the last 13 elections, it has been on the side of the winner.

Jobs and supply chain a central issue

Jobs occupy a pivotal role in determining prosperity and the supply chain is a central issue. Some political commentators identify that Ohio voted to re-elect President Obama because of Governor Romney’s gaffes over job issues. Early in the campaign the Governor criticised the Obama administration’s bail out of US motor manufacturing. He also used the phrase “build Jeeps in China” as an allusion to job losses at Chrysler plants in Ohio, which was a misrepresentation of the facts.

Like the UK the US has transitioned into a knowledge economy where professional, business, media, scientific and engineering jobs employ almost one-third of the working population. At the same time globalisation has seen manufacturing jobs migrate to lower cost labour economies, leaving just 6.5% of Americans involved in directly producing products.

If you are the government then this raises a question over the wisdom of letting manufacturing jobs move to lower labour cost economies; however, if you operate a supply chain in a cost sensitive and competitive sector, then it is simply a business decision.

See if you can support local jobs with NetSuite

In an uncertain economic climate wholesale distribution businesses need to support national employment, but in order to remain competitive and profitable they must also configure their supply chains as necessary. NetSuite helps you see if the needs of your business align with the need to support local jobs. Your business may be able to better configure its supply chain to support job creation in the UK, but to see if this works for you the business needs accurate real-time information.

NetSuite’s OneWorld business management suite, implemented by BlueBridge One offers growing and mid-size global organisations clarity of vision across all its business to remain competitive and profitable. NetSuite is cloud based offering the benefits of a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) approach with much lower costs than legacy on-premise ERP systems which require significant capital investment. BlueBridge One works with customers to optimise and configure NetSuite to meet their needs.

NetSuite OneWorld solution implemented by BlueBridge One lets home based growing and mid-size global organisations support local jobs by managing a global supply-chain, a supply chain issue that strongly influenced the US election.