Weekly questions Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Weekly questions - Assignment Example Apparently, US companies are tending towards outsourcing their customer service functions to companies that hire staff capable of communicating fluently in Spanish or English. While majority of international US companies have staff that is multi-lingual, most of them would still prefer to hire companies that possess a similar cultural affinity (Cromie & Zott, 2014). Therefore, they will tend to be more likely to outsource functions to locations that share a similar culture, thus preferring near-shoring. Although American companies have benefited immensely from offshore outsourcing in the past, the increasing investments in customer service has made them aware of the costs of miscommunication on their overall business. The US, as of 2013, had several trade sanctions and embargoes against several countries, including imposing embargoes on arms-related exports, financial restrictions, economic assistance restrictions, and dual-use exports controls. The embargo against Cuba is one example, which involves financial, economic, and commercial restrictions first imposed in 1960 and further extended in 1962 to cover almost all forms of imports (Coy, 2012). An arms-trade embargo has been in force since 1958 when Cuban rebels headed by Fidel Castro seized American properties and nationalized them. In addition, further actions to nationalize all privately-owned companies led to an embargo on all Cuban brown sugar imports. The US government responded to Castro’s Cold War alignment with the USSR by widening the scope of trade embargo restrictions, especially after Cuba hosted USSR missiles on their territory (Coy, 2012). This resulted in freezing of Cuban assets in the US and consolidation of all existing restrictions. Finally, in the wake of the shooting of unarmed US planes that killed four US citizens in 1992, the Helms-Burton Act restricted trafficking of property confiscated by the Cuban government