Socialist Progressives

And nobody expects any workers to work for $0.50 an hour. its likely that either the higher of the two nations minimum wages would apply, or the wage would be between them and their foreign employers, in other words its per-negotiated. The US minimum wage might become the de facto wage for workers here on these trade visas.

If you look at the WTO disciplines on accountancy or similar documents- which are in various stages (there was a huge flurry of activity in 2006 on this but it slacked off when Fast track expired) Recently with the Nairobi Ministerial there seems to have been another flurry of activity.

Wages are a controversial issue with many least developed countries (LDCs) because they see what they perceive as high minimum wages as a way of keeping them and their firms out when they have been promised this payback for so long but never actually gotten it.

The problem is that these changes will likely push US skilled wages down to global norms (thats clearly the aim) because growing amounts of government procurement will be put through the international bidding system and so local SMEs will lose out unless they can subcontract the work to these low wage international staffing firms or automate all the labor intensive tasks completely. Which is I think what will happen, especially in construction and similar areas.