Offshoring is a controversial aspect of globalisation, and its impact on source country welfare remains ambiguous. This column analyses the impacts of offshoring on local labour market outcomes in Japan. It finds that offshoring exposure led to higher local employment, and particularly for non-offshoring firms. Furthermore, offshoring helped mitigate the negative effects of
Concerns about international trade have grown, as recent studies document a negative effect of Chinese import competition on US labour markets. This column provides a new framework to explain this observation, which relies on the presence of downward nominal wage rigidity in US labour markets. The increased competition from China improves US terms of trade, but nominal wage