Re:Trade Policy (Score 1)

This may be a simplistic view, but as long as you have US-style corporations (who legally must continually increase their growth rate by any legal means), and easy movement across of corporations across soverign borders, you will end up with wages / living conditions / labor standards going down to the lowest possible levels, and staying there forever.

I would not call it simplistic. The line of reasoning you suggest is often refered to as race to the bottom, with which you seem quite familiar, and which is essentially both coherent and analytically persuasive.

I think it is wrong, however, and heres two reasons why:

First: the number of competent people available from overseas to fill up positions, and the ease whith which employers can transfer production overseas is probably vastly exaggerated. Remember that it is in the interests of both employers, to use as levereage to resist regulation locally, and unions, to secure jobs which factor conditions no longer favor local production from overseas competition, to exaggerate this threat.

Secondly: only the companies whose business models depend on screwing the worker, or the environment for that matter, would find it profitable to move production overseas as a result of stricter regulation.
This will potentially free up labor and other resources for companies whose businessmodels do not depend on such practices, while increased competition for labor in developing nations eventually decreases the costs of labor standards there, which as I argue in my original post, is the way it is meant to work.