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That's actually mythological. By the 60's most of the other economies had recovered.

Three things actually happened:

First the US government bought the support of foreign governments by allowing unfair trade. The best example is the US consumer electronics market. In the early 60s, US manufacturers were right up there with German and Japanese producers. The Johnson administration then allowed unfair Japanese competition in exchange for Japan's support of the Vietnam War. The Japanese closed their market to American imports, MITI heavily subsidized Japanese exporters and with a few years they drove most American TV manufacturers out of business. Even now, the State Department is perfectly willing to trade US jobs for diplomatic advantage. It's easier to do that than get foreign aid through Congress.

Second, in 1971 Nixon dropped the Bretton Woods gold exchange rules for international trade. Gold exchange automatically limited trade deficits because a big deficit meant a big transfer of gold and a big transfer of gold meant your currency went down and the exporters went up. Then Nixon also bequeathed us the EPA at the same time as import limitations fell, so US heavy industry was faced with enormous new costs that its foreign competitors did not face while many of them were also subsidized my their own governments. The result was the slow collapse of American heavy industry and their high-paying union jobs.

Third, the immigration reform act of the mid-60s and Reagan's amnesty meant the increasing trickle of immigrants became a flood, reducing American wages and displacing American workers.

Saying we are good at services like this article does is like saying a boxer has a good left hook after his right arm has been amputated.

There’s still an underlying economic force at work. In mass production (as in almost any business endeavor), products must be sold “upward” — i.e., the whole process is conducted in an economic paradigm where those who make a product are selling it to customers who are wealthier than them.

When your society has the highest standard of living in the history of mankind, it’s much more difficult to find customers to buy at the price point needed to support the wages of the people making any given product. That’s why the biggest U.S. manufacturing operations these days involve products that are sold not to people, but to governments and major corporate customers. Boeing aircraft is a perfect example of this.