When Hillary Clinton rose in front of 80,000 people to nominate Barack Obama for Democratic presidential candidate last week, she handed him not just her support, but also, it seems, her anti-offshoring campaign.

In accepting the historic nomination, the increasingly statesmanlike Obama took the opportunity to lambast offshoring and outsourcing as he outlined his approach to government.

Obama said he would “stop giving tax breaks to corporations that ship our jobs overseas, and I will start giving them to companies that create good jobs right here in America." While this is not a new promise from a Democratic candidate, it has never had such a global audience.

Indian firms – who are the main beneficiaries of US outsourcing activities – have reacted with a mixture of alarm, stoicism and optimism. While they look to Europe and elsewhere for new business opportunities, the fact remains that some 60-70% of their BPO revenues flow from the US.

Nasscom president Som Mittal responded that any decision to outsource is a strategic economic one for US companies, not a political one, and that outsourcing had helped boost the US economy over the boomtime of the past decade.

"Obama earlier said India and China will help the growth of US. US tech firms have thousands of jobs, but not enough talent at home," he added.

Infosys' T V Mohandas Pai reiterated the point, saying that almost 50% of the revenue of the top 1,000 US companies comes from outside the country.

What is certainly true is that many US firms believe they face a homegrown talent crunch, as well as the need to cut costs in these chillier economic climes.

Offshoring is also a way of outsourcing risk and hothousing R&D and development at a fraction of the cost of doing it at home. So slamming companies that outsource to the global market may be an easy patriotic bell to ring, but it ignores many of the reasons that US companies do it – and the inherent benefits to the US economy of doing so.

Nevertheless, many parts of the Indian BPO market are feeling the pinch as the depth of the economic downturn encourages some commentators – not to mention our injudicious chancellor – to talk of a serious recession.

But there is some good news for India as increasing numbers of financial services firms in Europe, Australia and New Zealand are offshoring work to the country.

A recent Deutsche Bank report has identified restructuring as the main impetus behind the trend, with offshore software development, business process outsourcing, call centres and accounting all on the rise.

The study also found that 32 percent of IT workers and 38 percent of support staff within European banks work overseas. Meanwhile, half of all retail banks worldwide are seeking to offshore at least part of their IT functions over the next five years, said the Deutsche Bank report.