But the biggest blow to the USA, the hardest to absorb, was the economic
recovery and then flourishing of Western Europe and Japan. By the
1960s, the productivity gap between these countries and the USA had
been more or less eliminated. The Western European countries and Japan
recovered control over their national markets and began to compete effectively
with US products in the markets of third countries. They even began
to be competitive within the US home market. The automaticity of US
economic advantage had thus largely disappeared by the late 1960s.