Quite apart from the cognitive dissonance of the account of companies "looking after" workers and reducing workers' share of the pie at the same time thanks to workers' goodwill that will disappear, not because workers' vital interests are at stake, but because the government can't enforce the further reduction of the workers' share of the pie that companies want...

A US recession would hit them, but no harder than previous ones. A lack of reform would be more painful

This looks like the sketch of a narrative we should expect to hear more of. Structural problems with globalising free-trade capitalism? No, no, just a little bitty cyclical recession in the US, that is nothing like as dangerous as a halt to the "reform" process...