Having worked with that kind of arrangement, I highly doubt if it _really_ worked outside of a MBA manager's presentation.

Yes, international talents are there, but unless you're willing to develop a local agency that are up to par with the quality standard of US, it's not going to be of positive value. At which point the cost might as well be the same.

This of course doesn't apply to relatively non-technical work like call centers.

My current company is currently re-shoring (if that's a word). After years of sub-optimal code being shipped over the systems eventually started to keeled over. It's been pretty eye opening rewriting some of the older code and seeing how little care was given, variables named x1, x2 etc....

Tech isn't always a cost center, though. Whether it is depends a lot on what part of the industry you're talking about.