In late June 2026, two pieces of US legislation re-entered the customer-service news cycle: the **Keep Call Centers in America Act of 2025** and the **HIRE Act of 2025**. Both target the offshoring of customer-support operations, and both have triggered an immediate response from the country most directly exposed — the Philippines, whose business-process outsourcing sector is the largest in the world at roughly **forty billion US dollars in annual revenue**, per **Philstar** and **GMA News Online** reporting (24 June 2026, "Serious threat to BPO industry"). The Philippine Department of Trade and Industry has convened the country's BPO leadership in response, and outlets including **Outsource Accelerator** and **BusinessWorld** have documented the industry's lobbying posture.
This article is written for the US and EU operations leader who has to read past the headline and decide what, if anything, to change in the customer-support operating model. We will keep three principles in mind throughout: (1) describe what the bills *propose* rather than what they have *enacted*; (2) name the deeper structural variable, which is artificial intelligence resetting agent headcount in every geography simultaneously; (3) lay out a neutral decision framework rather than a partisan reading of US trade policy.
Our position at Call IT Dev — and the reason we publish this analysis — is that the resilient operating answer to both political and technological pressure is a multilingual nearshore hub on European time, with a transparent human-plus-AI model and a cost basis that already absorbs a meaningful share of the AI productivity gain. We discuss the technical and contractual companion to this argument in our piece on the <a href="/en/blog/eu-ai-act-august-2026-obligations-ai-outsourcing-compliance-checklist">EU AI Act compliance checklist for companies building or outsourcing AI</a>.
Both texts are proposals introduced in the 119th US Congress in 2025 and remain under consideration in 2026. Neither is law at the time of writing. The factual content most relevant to a CX buyer:
These are proposals. They have not, as of late June 2026, been enacted into US federal law, and their final scope, thresholds and effective dates remain subject to the legislative process. The relevant point for a CX buyer is not to bet on enactment or non-enactment — that is a political prediction — but to recognize that **the legislative direction of travel is now public, named, and has bipartisan visibility**, and that a procurement decision made today should be designed to be robust to either outcome.
Per **Philstar** (24 June 2026) and **GMA News Online**, Philippine industry leaders described the proposals as a "serious threat" to the country's BPO industry. The reaction has scale-of-impact behind it. The Philippines BPO sector employs more than **1.8 million workers** by widely cited industry estimates and generates **roughly forty billion US dollars** in annual revenue, of which **a substantial majority is derived from US-headquartered clients**. **BusinessWorld** reported the Philippine Department of Trade and Industry has called a coordination meeting with the top BPO executives; **Outsource Accelerator** has tracked the industry-association response.
The Philippine sector is not catastrophically exposed in the short term — most US clients have multi-year contracts and high switching costs — but the *medium-term* growth thesis is now in question. If the proposals advance, even partially, the country's growth from forty billion toward the often-cited fifty-nine billion 2028 target slows. That is the real operational signal: the *single-geography concentration risk* in US customer support is being publicly priced for the first time since the model became dominant in the 2000s.
The political headline is real, but it is not the largest variable in the customer-support cost structure for 2026 to 2028. The largest variable is **artificial intelligence resetting the per-contact economics across every geography simultaneously**.
A practical reading of the 2026 evidence:
For the US buyer reading the Keep Call Centers in America Act of 2025 and the HIRE Act of 2025, the operational consequence is the same regardless of legislative outcome: **the number of full-time equivalents your support function will need in 2027 is materially lower than the number it needed in 2024**, and the *mix* of where those FTEs sit is more important than the *count*. A procurement strategy designed around 2019-vintage geography arbitrage is already obsolete on its own merits; a strategy designed around the 2026 hybrid model is robust to the legislative outcome either way.
Five questions that a CX leader can use to stress-test the current support operating model in light of both the reshoring proposals and the AI reset. None of these is partisan; all are operational.
A buyer who answers these five questions honestly will, in most cases, conclude that the resilient operating model is *not* single-geography offshore and *not* full onshore. It is a multilingual nearshore hub on European time, layered with a transparent AI tier, sized to leave the customer with the same per-contact spend at materially better quality and materially lower geopolitical exposure.
We are explicit about our position. Casablanca and Rabat operate on Central European Time year-round, two hours by flight from Frankfurt and Paris, with native English, French, Spanish, Arabic and growing German and Italian coverage on a labor cost basis that delivers fifty to seventy percent savings versus US and Western European in-house operations. The country's data-protection law (09-08) is aligned with GDPR principles, which removes a class of friction for EU buyers.
What that translates into operationally for a CX buyer reconsidering the offshore footprint in 2026:
For buyers comparing options concretely, the practical engagement shape typically combines our <a href="/en/services/bpo">BPO and contact-center operations</a> capability, the <a href="/en/services/ai-automation">AI automation</a> tier for transparent bot-plus-human routing, the published <a href="/en/call-center-outsourcing-cost">call-center outsourcing cost</a> reference for buyer-side budgeting, and the geographic and economic context in <a href="/en/why-morocco">Why Morocco</a> for comparing nearshore alternatives.
Three actions that are low-cost, neutral on the political debate, and useful regardless of how the legislation resolves.
The Keep Call Centers in America Act of 2025 and the HIRE Act of 2025 are proposals, not law. The Philippine BPO industry — at roughly forty billion US dollars and 1.8 million workers — has named them a serious threat and is responding through its trade association and government. The deeper variable that the legislative story is partially obscuring is that **artificial intelligence is resetting the per-contact economics of customer support in every geography at once**, and that the most defensible operating model in either legislative outcome is a multilingual nearshore hub on European time, with a transparent human-plus-AI tier and a cost basis that absorbs part of the AI gain into the buyer's margin rather than the vendor's.
The political news cycle will continue. The AI cost reset will not pause for it. The resilient buyer designs for both.
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**Sources:** GMA News Online and Philstar (24 June 2026, "Serious threat to BPO industry"); Outsource Accelerator, Philippines BPO industry analysis; BusinessWorld, Department of Trade and Industry coverage of the BPO leadership coordination meeting; texts of the Keep Call Centers in America Act of 2025 and the HIRE Act of 2025 as introduced in the 119th US Congress. This article describes proposed US legislation under consideration and is not legal or political advice.
No. As of late June 2026 both texts remain proposals under consideration in the 119th US Congress. Neither has been enacted. The procurement question is therefore not whether to bet on enactment, but whether the current support footprint is robust to either outcome. This article is not legal or political advice.
Per the text in circulation, it would require US employers to notify the Secretary of Labor at least 120 days before relocating a customer-service call center substantially outside the United States, maintain a public list of relocating employers, and make those employers ineligible for certain federal grants and federally-guaranteed loans for up to five years. It would also require agents to disclose their physical location on request.
Per Philstar and GMA News Online reporting on 24 June 2026, Philippine industry leaders called the proposals a "serious threat" to a sector worth roughly US$40 billion in annual revenue and employing more than 1.8 million workers, with a substantial majority of revenue from US clients. The Philippine Department of Trade and Industry has convened the country's BPO leadership in response, per BusinessWorld and Outsource Accelerator.
AI is the larger structural variable. Tier-1 deflection rates of 30–60% are now documented across multiple deployments, the contacts reaching humans are harder on average, and the geography arbitrage compresses on the AI slice. The legislative debate is a real risk to price into procurement, but the operating model needs to be reset for the AI economics regardless of how Congress proceeds.
Casablanca and Rabat operate on Central European Time, two hours by flight from Frankfurt, with native English, French, Spanish, Arabic and growing German and Italian coverage at 50–70% savings versus US in-house. The geography is not a primary target of the 2025 reshoring proposals on the texts in circulation, the data-protection regime is GDPR-aligned, and the hybrid AI-plus-human model is operable from a single roster. Full US onshore reshoring removes the geopolitical exposure at the cost of the AI productivity gain.
Three actions, all neutral on the political debate: map the current support footprint by country of delivery and by intent; pilot a nearshore-plus-AI slice on one commercial language for one quarter in parallel with the incumbent; and write a political-resilience clause into the next vendor RFP requiring delivery capacity across at least two geographies on at least two continents. The first two are low-cost and produce a side-by-side comparison that survives the news cycle.
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