Race to the Bottom?

I'm wary of the image of the 'race to the bottom' peddled by the American left. 
 It does not conform with the reality of increasing numbers of Chinese and 
Indian workers being able to afford some of the basic commodities of the 
contemporary world as manufacturing and services are shifted there. 
Furthermore, economic growth is likely to strengthen the hand of those 
countries to play a geopolitical role in the new century. It is difficult to 
see how, in the context of an integrated world economy, manufacturing is to be 
maintained in the US. The US has a lot of money, if it had the political will, 
to ease this transition.  Free trade pacts pit workers against one another, but 
so do protectionist measures of the sort often advocated by the more powerful 
American unions or, for that matter, George Bush, who has not yet negotiated a 
free trade pact of any importance, but has signed bills protecting the American 
steel industry and subsidizing US agriculture.
Steven Sherman