A POLICY PROPOSAL, WITH JUSTIFICATION, TO EITHER SEVERELY RESTRICT OR ELIMINATE
THE IMPORT OF JAPANESE PRODUCTS INTO THE UNITED STATES
The American international trade deficit is the largest in the world in the last years of the twentieth century, and the Japanese international trade surplus is the largest in the world.1 Further, America's largest bilateral international trade deficit is with Japan, and Japan's largest bilateral trade surplus is with the United States.2 This bilateral disparity in Japanese/American trade has developed without (1) Japan becoming America's largest trading partner (Canada holds that position), and (2) in the absence of any significant petroleum trade between the two countries.3 If it has not already occurred, Japan and the United States are well on the way to trading economic places in the world, with Japan emerging as the world's economic leader.4 This research proposes and justifies a policy to address the imbalance in Japanese American trade through either the severe restriction or elimination of the import of Japanese products into the United States.
Principal Reasons Underlying the Problem
Although the reasons for the trade disparity between Japan and the United States are many and varied, the principal causes appear to lie with American industry more than with unfair tactics by the Japanese, although there is some Japanese fault involved in the situation.5 An illustration of the contribution to the problem by American industry is the situation in automobile manufacture. Since 1973, the time of the first Arab Crude Oil Embargo against western countries, the automobile manufacturing industry in the United States has been on the defensive against foreign competition. The American industry suffered additional setbacks in the economic recession of the early 1980s, and, although the American Big 3 automobile manufacturers have made progress s...