(or RGFS, or some other trade organization or arbitral dispute body- i.e. special trade court) as an attempt to weasel out of our obligations to open up to foreign services firms, if they have to pay it. this is a longstanding dispute that goes back 20 years-
they actually do not want wage parity because they see "high" US (and other developed countries0 minimum wages as being used to keep their services firms- whose main compatitive advantage as being their low wages, out.
Also, trade deals have clauses- known as ratchet and standstill clauses, which limit "nonconforming measures" (broadly, all regulations just about can be framed as non-conforming, it sometimes seems) to those which existed at the signing of the agreements. 9they also have rollback clauses which can be utilized to roll back regulations to some earlier state- for example, they could be used with parts of the ACA) I know it sounds unreasonable and it is, but its been argued I think at least twice that any "regulation" which manipulates the conditions relating to workers employment which has an "adverse effect" on profitability of foreign multinational firms operating here as part of a multilateral trade agreement- would violate these agreements and that governments should pay for it- (See for example, Veolia Propreté v. Arab Republic of Egypt) This is the bizarre and horrid world of international investment deals. So, its possible that an organization like the WTO could decide to tell us how to pay workers if foreign firms here under special trade deals were made subject to US wage laws- the alternative- to let them have their workers work for anything they can agree on is to many equally odious-
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