Sorry you are off by about a decade.
80’s.
We have been sending US jobs overseas for now 30 years.
Non-stop.
Hardly I was in Hong Kong when Tiananmen happened in ‘89 as I was supposed to be going to language school in Beijing that summer. Spent the next 6 years in the westpac. Tiananmen held things back until enough time had passed for most people to put it behind them.
Entered manufacturing in the early 90s when all the rage was Mexico and NAFTA - not China. China may have had minor touchs in the 80’s but nothing really started until around ‘94-’96. China wasn’t even in the WTO at that point.
The big players like GE didn’t start their move with China and India until the late 90’s. Some divisions not until early 2000’s. Mainly because the capability wasn’t there. In some cases it still isn’t cause I have to deal with it on a regular basis in quality.
I’ve lived this the last 30 years and I know when it kicked off - if you want I’ll even pull the books and literature to demonstrate when it started being discussed actively.
Now if you want to talk about Mexico, Latin America,etc (Japan doesn’t qualify as we didn’t ship the jobs, they just ate our lunch with quality, efficiency, and technology) I’ll be more than happy to give you the 30 years - but not China there it’s only 20.
I can understand why. We have the highest corporate tax rate in the world. We also have unions with an instatiable appetite for freebies. Add massive regulations and PC mind control laws to the mix, and it's a recipe for disaster.
Who in their right mind would want to build industries or businesses here when they can go anywhere in the world and actually be welcomed?