Back in 2018, I wrote a story, To Kill an Outsourcing Bird. For my younger readers, that’s supposed to be a clear allusion to another kind of bird – a mocking one. I entertained the idea of “outsourcegeddon.” You know, Trump being Trump, small carrots and big sticks for companies that refuse to do business exclusively within the walls of the US bricks.

I wrote about Gandalf on Capitol Hill, who’s crying out: “You shall not outsource!” That’s how I came up with the idea for this story’s illustration with the help of AI. My prompts are clumsy, and my fingers are impatient. Here’s the second version:

That’s me being me; I worry more about the visuals than the textuals. But hey, I’ve improved. I look at my original PPT illustration from 2018 and think: thank you, AI Terminator.

Then, in 2020, HackerNoon published my story about Freelancers, Hackers, and Presidential Candidates. I didn’t have many nice things to say about Biden, either, because of the CA AB5:

The press, from that time, felt the same way:

California's AB5 employment legislation is Democratic gift to Donald Trump

Will California Democrats be forgiven for AB5?

AB 5 Has Lifelong Democrats Voting Red for the First Time

Freelancers and gig workers watched in fear as both Trump and Biden actively shrank their remote work world. We thought that remote work days were over, but the pandemic had different plans.

So, here I am in 2025, writing the same old story for the third time.

Big and Beautiful Bill With A License to Kill – Remote Work

“The bill, introduced on Friday and known as the "Halting International Relocation of Employment Act" or "HIRE Act," creates a 25% tax on "outsourcing payments" which are defined as any money paid by a U.S. company or taxpayer to a foreign person whose work benefits U.S. consumers.”

Who’s going to pay this 25% tax? The usual remote work suspects – freelancers. Here’s how it works with these so-called “outsourcing payments.” I’m a foreign person whose work benefits US customers because I just finished a project for a US client who paid me for it. If I want to continue working with this or any other US client, I will have to cut my hourly rate by 25%.

There’s no way the US clients will pay these taxes out of their own pockets.

To all of you, who are cheering Papa Trump for bringing remote jobs back home, I have a few questions: Do you really want those outsourced jobs? What would be your lowest price? Do you remember this one at the dawn of the Tariff Wars?

During the pandemic, one US client took me under his startup wings. He told me a story about how the economic collapse of 2018 hit him hard. After losing everything, firing everyone, and shutting down the old company, he promised himself: never again. So, he traveled on the other side of the globe to find rock-star freelancers and meet with them in person. One thing led to another, and the new startup world on remote work foundations was born. He used to be enthusiastic about Trump. Does he probably (arguably) feel the same way?

But hey, in the words of Laura Loomer, a remote-work-doomer: Let’s Make Call Centers American Again!

This post got 2.2M views. And, this reply came from a country (my best guess) with more than 15M freelancers (according to Wiki). I just thought of something. Let me share it with you:

When Trump says tariffs, does he mean China, China, China?

When Trump says outsourcing, does he mean India, India, India?

America First - Future of Remote Work With A Twist

Remote jobs with a catch, you keep seeing online, have been a problem for some time. I wrote about it two years ago. Let me sum it up with one of my memes:

What do you think is going to happen now? Every freelancer on the globe knows that the overwhelming majority of remote jobs are coming from the USA. The US clients are the most desirable ones in the world, regardless of your freelance skills.

On the one side, the America First and US-only side, we will have so many remote jobs that the Labor Stats are going to be in surplus for the next thousand years. On the other side, the global side of things, we will have millions of freelancers with nothing better to do.

I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of bad news for the remote work industry. My story about Upwork splitting into two companies is now a reality. Now, we have Upwork (regular) and Lifted, which is an “enterprise-focused subsidiary.” In plain English, that’s Upwork’s Toptal version. If you haven’t already, you can join the waiting list. And, there’s more.

There’s a pending update to Upwork ToS that will become effective September 10, 2025. I get a deja vu, another purge vibe because of this line: “This modified version of Upwork's Terms of Use updates what you not allowed to do on the platform.” I hope I’m dead wrong, but I’m afraid many Upwork freelancers (not clients) will soon start complaining online about their suspended accounts.

Just when you thought that remote working in the time of AI couldn’t get any worse, here comes Trump with his latest big and beautiful bill. Now, if you’d excuse me, I have to go and try to grab some big and beautiful US client for some remote work, while I still can.