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What spurred the investments was Tokyo's agreement last June to lift trade restrictions that limited imports of U.S. beef to 14% of Japan's market, which last year totaled 676,000 tons. Since Japanese meat companies expect to import much more U.S.-grown beef, they realize that if they own some of the American cattle operations, they will have a larger stake in the profits...
Japan's looming economic supremacy cannot be explained merely with complaints about unfair practices like dumping and import barriers. Its key advantages are national self-discipline, including a capacity for self- sacrifice. Economists have long noted that the Japanese people save at triple the rate that Americans do. They produce more than they consume, while Americans do the opposite. The effective corporate tax rate has been 50% higher in Japan than in the U.S., and in the upper brackets, personal income tax rates are also significantly higher...
...contrast to $125 million the previous year. The industry piled up total profits estimated at $2 billion in 1988, and is expected to match that performance this year. But the revival has ignited a bitter lobbying battle between Big Steel and its customers. The $ mills claim they need import restraints to keep the good times rolling. But major buyers, notably the manufacturers of automobiles and heavy machinery, argue that such protectionism is inflationary and vow to oppose it in Washington...
Nonetheless, Japan has made solid progress in overhauling its economy to help ease the trade imbalance. The country is phasing out protectionist quotas on U.S. beef and citrus products, for example, and has opened its construction market to foreign bidders. Japan imported 48% more U.S.-made computers and office equipment in 1988 than in the previous year, and 55% more semiconductors and telecommunications equipment. "A massive structural change has taken place in the Japanese economy," says economist Noriko Hama of the Mitsubishi Research Institute. "We are much more import-oriented than we were a couple of years...
After years of good, gray Masterpiece Theatre dramas, this three-hour import from Britain's innovative Channel 4 comes like a bracing wind from the North Sea. No decorous Edwardian soap opera, no fine period costumes, no tasteful cello music. This is a crackling, contemporary political thriller, directed at headlong speed by Mick Jackson from a witty, clued-in script by Alan Plater. The dialogue is dense, often overlapping, sometimes unintelligible. Compared with such relatively simpleminded American efforts as the NBC mini-series Favorite Son, A Very British Coup seems revolutionary in its own right: a TV political drama...