>But its not clear that existing American workers would be better off.
There's actually a relatively noncontroversial theorem in mainstream economics that suggests with free migration (or trade), the wages of less-skilled workers in the richer country will fall, and in the poorer country will rise, until they meet in the middle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factor_price_equalization. Economists still consider the outcome to overall be positive because the workers in the poor country gain more than those in the rich country lose, and both benefit from increased productivity growth in the long term.
“When it gets down to it — talking trade balances here — once we've brain-drained all our technology into other countries, once things have evened out, they're making cars in Bolivia and microwave ovens in Tadzhikistan and selling them here — once our edge in natural resources has been made irrelevant by giant Hong Kong ships and dirigibles that can ship North Dakota all the way to New Zealand for a nickel — once the Invisible Hand has taken away all those historical inequities and smeared them out into a broad global layer of what a Pakistani brickmaker would consider to be prosperity — y'know what? There's only four things we do better than anyone else:
music
movies
microcode (software)
high-speed pizza delivery”
While Snow Crash has its problems (like the standard Stephenson 'ending? what ending?') everyone should read the first chapter. That chapter on its own is a work of art.
The interesting thing about this is that the rich country (where people have more to lose, and do lose) generally has more control over immigration and trade flows. So even though this kind of result might be better for the poorer countries, politicians in the richer countries will never allow this to happen since it would hurt their re-election prospects due to accusations of "giving those foreigners our jobs".
That's not what we see in the U.S., a region of free migration and trade with regional anchors moving in differing directions based on unique variables for each region. There is no normalization going on, but further stratification.
There's actually a relatively noncontroversial theorem in mainstream economics that suggests with free migration (or trade), the wages of less-skilled workers in the richer country will fall, and in the poorer country will rise, until they meet in the middle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factor_price_equalization. Economists still consider the outcome to overall be positive because the workers in the poor country gain more than those in the rich country lose, and both benefit from increased productivity growth in the long term.