IF we hadn’t off shored so many industries( to many to list) how much large would the economy be? It would be huge.
Nope. All the money that went into capital investment would instead have been wasted on higher priced American made goods, which lets be honest, were getting pretty shoddy back in the 70's. It was free trade that forced American industry to up its game and compete on quality and price. I lived through the 70's and in my opinion we were maybe a couple of business cycles away from losing the cold war during the Carter years.