Honestly, I don't have a crystal ball.

On one hand, I can see many US firms which do heavy heavy business internationally moving a large part of their IT back office ops to India while keeping elite, quick reaction teams available at key locations here. I can also see the same US firms keeping all highly regulated data here. Sales and marketing activity and their support can only be done by the people on the spot. I expect R&D to be distributed all around the world, and we are probably going to see a heavier commitment to R&D as say, Russian, Indian, Chinese or Vietnamese researchers are dirt cheap compared to their costs in the US.

On the known positive side, we live in a 7x24 world: if we are asleep, half of the world is awake and vice-versa. I expect that many more of us are going to work the support night shift as the economies of India, China and the other APEC nations continue to expand.

Free trade has worked well for us: we had to adjust to Asian competition earlier than our Western European counterparts, and as a result we became more effective and efficient. Western Europe kept its social safety net up at the cost of high taxes, high barriers to imports, high barriers to immigration and as a result, the social costs of their policies found themselves included into the pricing of their goods and services. Nobody look at Western Europe as the engine of the world economy.

Free trade is good for us as it is good for everyone else but with an implied caveat: free trade is good for us only if we can make the freedom in free trade work for us. Free trade in no sense means trade with no rules, or trade with street fighting rules - which mean anything goes. Example: if someone competes with us using prison labor and gets away with it, we are screwed. Free trade must include fairness.

I have wasted enough of your time: in conclusion, my answer is a resounding "I don't know !"

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