A new ad released yesterday for President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign condemns Republican candidate Mitt Romney of outsourcing jobs and slams him for keeping money in foreign bank accounts.

The ad asserts that Romney “shipped American jobs to places like Mexico and China” whilst lead at the investment firm Bain Capital, as well as stating that Romney “outsourced state jobs to a call center in India” when he was governor of Massachusetts.

The campaign has spent the considerable sum of $780,000 to place the ad in the three crucial swing states Virginia, Ohio and Iowa.

The Obama ad is in response to a spot released last week by the conservative political group Americans for Prosperity which suggested money from Obama’s $814 billion economic stimulus package went to overseas green-energy companies.

However, Obama’s ad fails to make the crucial distinction between outsourcing and offshoring, the lack of distinction seems to mirror American confusion towards the two practices.

Obama’s move away from offshoring and encouraging companies not to send work abroad seems to be dominated by the phrase ‘offshore outsourcing’. Whilst this is technically correct, ‘offshoring’ and ‘outsourcing’ are very different practices. However, the combined term muddles the practices, and ‘outsourcing’ to Americans becomes ‘offshoring’.

The reasons behind outsourcing, and even the advantages of it, are pushed into the background in favour of a more propaganda beneficial image of jobs being sent abroad contributing to the high unemployment rate, rather than companies engaging in more contracts and creating more work.