Reply #35: It began with Carter and the early agreements negotiated by Mondale

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

and more or less culminated with Clinton's MFN engagement policy in 1994, the prevailing attitude was the manufacturing lost to China and others wasn't really worth saving - and that isn't entirely unreasonable. The ultimate problem is when the US was faced with the decline of manufacturing we sat on our collective asses and shook our fists at the sky - while Europe built-up their high-tech industries and supported propagating those industries across the continent. That is where we were stupid - in the face of a changing world we did nothing.