around automobiles, has introduced a major element of tension into the relationship, with each side feeling threatened by the other, and accusing it of bad faith.
The following discussion will seek to examine the sources and course of the automobile trade dispute between Japan and the United States since the early 1970s, with a twofold intent in mind. An evaluation will be presented of the condition of the American automotive industry at the time when Japanese imports began arriving in large numbers. The shape of the competitive battlefield between domestic and imported cars will be outlined, and the progress of the competitive struggle will be traced.
The experience of the American automotive industry will then be considered retrospectively. Does the domestic industry have a bright future, or is it still in a state of continuing decline? More broadly, what lessons can be learned about the response of long-established industries to the challenges of an international marketplace in the late 20th century? The argument to be presented here is based on the premise that the controversy over Japanese automobile imports can only be fully understood in the context of the overall development of the American automobile industry during this period.
It will be argued that the American industry was already in a state of incipient crisis before Japanese imports became a serious force in the American domestic market, a crisis that had already evoked an import challenge by Volkswagen.
This crisis consisted of three components: safety, general quality, and styling. Ralph Nader's Unsafe at Any Speed, published in 1966, launched the modern consumerist movement. It was primarily an attack on the safety of the Corvair, but implicitly an indictment of the safety of all American cars, and of the corporate practices that led to such unsafe cars being offered to the American public.
Nader's attack on Detroit was unprecedented,...