Word: protectionists
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...Prime Minister's vague program may not be enough to calm the protectionist furor in Congress, where both the House and Senate have overwhelmingly passed resolutions calling on the President to retaliate against Japan unless it reduces import restrictions. Said Republican Senator John Danforth of Missouri: "The problem is not going to be solved by a single Nakasone speech or package of promises. The only thing that counts is results." Agreed Representative John Dingell, a Michigan Democrat: "We essentially have here an unsecured promissory note, and if our negotiations with Japan continue as they have in the past...
...from an outright trade war, which would involve a series of trade reprisals by both sides. "Like real wars," says I.M. Destler, a senior fellow at the Institute for International Economics in Washington, "trade wars tend to leave everybody worse off." Two years after Washington passed the virulently protectionist Smoot-Hawley bill in 1930, the wave of trade and currency reprisals that it provoked slashed U.S. exports by 60%, helping deepen the Great Depression. Japan's obsession with maintaining supplies of raw materials for its export industries was largely responsible for the Pacific adventurism that led it into World...
...closed to them, even when they offered products superior to those produced locally. That was an annoyance when Japan was struggling to recover economically in the early postwar years. Today, when Japan is on the verge of surpassing the Soviet Union as the world's second-largest economy, its protectionist tendencies seem inappropriate. "Japan is a mature, developed country," says an Administration trade official. "But it still acts like a developing country." The U.S. is not alone in its frustration: < for the past decade, the European Community has been battering at the Japanese government almost as hard as Washington...
Beyond that, the Japanese point out, the U.S. is not entirely free of 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...
...tough talk does not necessarily make good economic policy. The Administration and some Democrats argue that protectionist barriers cost more to maintain than they are worth. By the estimate of the U.S. International Trade Commission, the voluntary import restraints on Japanese autos that were recently lifted cost U.S. consumers $89,250 a year in higher car prices for each U.S. autoworker's job saved. Furthermore, free-traders argue, a protectionist cocoon would discourage manufacturers from reaching for greater operating efficiencies...