Word: businessmen
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Tokyo said it would unveil a more comprehensive and detailed plan of action in July, but U.S. businessmen doubt that swift and sweeping changes are in store. "This is just more rhetoric," said John McDonnell, a group vice president for the Electronic Industries Association. "Old habits will die hard," agreed Chairman Edson Spencer of Honeywell, the Minneapolis-based computer company. An American official based in Japan called Nakasone's speech a "big yawn...
...Nippon Telegraph & Telephone, which is now being converted from a government monopoly to a private company, signed a new contract to buy 10,000 telephones from ITT. Nonetheless, many American telecommunications executives considered these gestures to be mere tokens. Whenever Japan unveils a program to boost imports, many foreign businessmen get a feeling of seeing an I Love Lucy rerun for the tenth time. Nakasone's new plan is the sixth trade- liberalization package announced since 1981. Yet Japan's imports have decreased by nearly 5% in the past three years, and booming exports have more than doubled its annual...
Actually, the Japanese have dismantled many of the tariffs and quotas that once kept their markets off limits to foreign competition. But the removal has made little difference to foreign businessmen. Instead they find themselves up against an array of cultural and technical trade barriers, including a closed and cumbersome bureaucracy, an old-boy system of business contacts that is nearly impervious to outsiders, and a buy-Japan-first attitude in the marketplace. Says Robert G. Gressens, president of GTE International Inc., a manufacturer of telecommunications equipment: "We don't face any specific laws and regulations that we point...
Even if imported products meet Japanese standards, businessmen complain, the cost and effort required to substantiate that claim are virtually Sisyphean. A new pharmaceutical product, for example, must be tested on more than 150 Japanese patients at five or more medical facilities, even if it has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration or another national drug- testing agency. The application data demanded for each new product run from 5,000 to 20,000 pages, and they are reviewed behind closed doors. Says Klaus Kran, president of Searle Yakuhin K.K., the Osaka-based affiliate of the U.S. drug...
...protectionist reflexes. Besides negotiating the "voluntary" restraint on cars, the Reagan Administration has imposed a 25% import duty on Japanese small trucks. As for the allegedly aggressive takeover of U.S. consumer markets, Yardeni admits succinctly, "Part of the problem is that the Japanese make awfully good products." Also, U.S. businessmen bring a few cultural barriers of their own to the bargaining, starting with their reluctance to become fluent in the language of their prospective clients. Jokes an official of the Foreign Ministry in Tokyo: "If you say all barriers must be eliminated, the Japanese would have to stop speaking Japanese...