U S Japan Economic Relations

U.S.—Japanese Economic Relations: Cooperation, Competition, and Confrontation provides a comprehensive review of the patterns of U.S.-Japanese interaction. This book describes the tension in the economic sphere that frayed the whole system of connections between U.S. and Japan, including various factors that contribute to these tensions. The ways on how to to reverse the process of estrangement that can lead both nations out of the atmosphere of confrontation and back into one of healthy competition and cooperation is also elaborated. This text also discusses Japan and the United States’ possible developments of policies in pursuit of a rapprochement. This publication is a good reference for students and individuals researching on the sources of confrontation, competition, and cooperation in U.S.-Japanese relations.

The time is ripe for a bold new initiative to recast the U.S.-Japan economic relationship for the 21st century. A new Japan is emerging. Foreign investment is on the rise. Tokyo is deregulating and restructuring its economy. A new generation of entrepreneurs and venture capitalists has emerged. But a more vibrant, sustainable Japanese economy is threatened by the crushing weight of Japans mounting public debt, the burden of its aging and shrinking population and the cumulative toll of years of economic stagnation. New governments in Washington and Tokyo have a unique opportunity to reinvigorate the U.S.-Japan relationship and to accelerate the pace and redirect the nature of change in the Japanese economy by creating a U.S.-Japan " open marketplace" --free of tariffs, with minimal regulatory impediments and an increasing freedom to do business--by the year 2010. This effort would include harmonization and mutual recognition of domestic regulations, meaningful enforcement of competition policy, deeper restructuring of the Japanese economy, and a dramatic increase in Japanese imports and greater acceptance of foreign investment. In this effort, the United States must assert its economic self-interest through new structural and sectoral trade initiatives and stepped up multilateral market-opening pressure through cases brought to the World Trade Organization. A New Beginning: Recasting the U.S.-Japan Economic Relationship, by Bruce Stokes, is a road map for U.S.-Japan economic relations in the 21st century.

This study considers the current economic relationship between the United States and Japan. Bergsten and Noland (both Institute for International Economics) along with Japanese economist Ito (Hitosubashi U.) argue that Japan no longer poses a unique economic threat to the United States and that the U.S. should begin treating Japan like any other major economic power. Among the topics covered are the resurgence of the American economy, the decline of the Japanese economy, resolving disputes through the WTO, and international finance. c. Book News Inc.

The bilateral relationship with Japan now dominates American thinking on the benefits and costs of foreign trade. This paper reevaluates the past and future course of U.S.-Japan economic relations. It identifies six distinct aspects of the relationship that may underlie the continuing friction: bilateral imbalance on merchandise trade, capital flows from Japan to the United States, the yen/dollar exchange rate, sectoral trade distortions, Japan's technological catch-up, and societal differences. For each source of conflict, the main causes and potential remedies are assessed. Several important conclusions emerge from the analysis. First, although the bilateral trade and capital-account imbalances were produced primarily by macroeconomic factors and can therefore be viewed as "temporary" rather than long-term developments, elimination of the imbalances without serious damage may be difficult to achieve. In terms of sectoral adjustments, the U.S.-Japan relationship is entering a new phase as the two nations grow more similar in terms of technology base, abundance of capital and skilled labor, and per capita income. Two-way trade in technology and in technology-based services will become increasingly important, while both nations will cope with similar problems of adjustment to pressure from a new tier of competitors in Asia and elsewhere. As the aggregate imbalances diminish, sectoral trade conflict will be concentrated on the two ends of the technology spectrum, with issues raised both by conflicting approaches to the phasing out of uncompetitive industries and by the nurturing of new technology-based industries