>OK, but why did that happen and who did it benefit. And what does the truck driver's daughter think of the American Dream now?

It happened because:
A. The rest of the world - primarily Europe and Asia - rebuilt its manufacturing base and was able to break the US monopoly.
B. The baby boom in the US ended with a thud during the late 60's, drastically reducing domestic demand at the same time that women started entering the US work force in droves.
In effect you doubled the work force at the same time that demand was shrinking.
C. Automation had a profound effect.

Whom did it benefit? - primarily low wage workers in Asia.
Look at Japan, Korea and China today compared to what they looked like in 1960.
The change is staggering. However, each boom city there has an equivalent dead city in the US.. Trenton, Camden, Akron, Cleveland, Detroit, etc.
Many women in the US seem to think that they benefitted.
Technical people in the US continue to benefit.

My Irish Republican ancestry prompts me to think that it was some kind of corporate conspiracy, but I was the CFO of a publicly traded company while all this was happening and from where I sat the macro forces were unstoppable.
Entire industries disappeared in what seemed a blink of an eye.

The only policy choice here was to adopt restrictive trade policies, similar to those adopted in some of the controlled economies in Europe.
That might have been a good idea in retrospect but politically it was unthinkable here.

That truck diver's daughter probably took a job that used to be filled by a guy.