Was the Japanophobia really this bad in the 80s?
Was the Japanophobia really this bad in the 80s?
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The Tom Clancy book where the Japanese airline pilot kamikazes the Capitol building was amazing
>Japan, Iran and China are all conspiring together to destroy the US
truly peak American jingoist paranoia, kino books though
Are Tom Clancy books generally very dated seeming, by now?
Lol yes. Walter Mondale, running as Democratic Party presidential candidate in 1984:
>"We have to stop following that white flag and start running up the American flag and turn and fight and make America number one again in international commerce so that American jobs are filled in this country."
>On a trip to Detroit, Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill threatened to "fix the Japanese like they've never been fixed before." Democratic congressman Jack Brooks opined that the U.S. should have dropped four nuclear bombs on Japan, not just two.
U.S.-Japan trade frictions were eventually defused by a combination of "voluntary" export quotas, penalties under "Super 301" legislation (a unilateral process for targeting nations supposedly guilty of unfair trade), a large-scale shift of Japanese auto manufacturing from Japan to the U.S. and liberalization of Japanese imports in previously protected areas. There was also a gigantic managed revaluation of the yen which blunted Japanese competitiveness.
>
Yes, America always produce propaganda against nations they feel threatened by. This is because they're a weak and fragile country which is doomed to fail.
This. The Mutt empire is on the verge of collapse
what empire?
The neocon-neolib-finance globohomo empire?
Go to bed, Muhammad
>criticize America
>YO-YOU'RE MUSLIM!
Dumbass mutt piece of shit. You're probably pick a new boogieman in 10 or 20 years time and newer generations will forget this conflict because Americans have memories of goldfishes.
>You're
You'll*
It got you to respond didn't it? I mean you could've glossed over it and ignored like a mature human being but instead you spazzed out like an inane retard. Gg
What's wrong with criticising Japanese trade policy?
>Japan's raid on the American market dates back to 1956, when the largest Japanese manufacturers formed the Home Electronic Appliance Market Stabilization Council, an illegal production cartel. The intent of the cartel was to monopolize the domestic market for television receivers, radios and other home electric products and to exclude foreign imports. Once their home market was secure, they would launch a drive against the far richer American market.
>The Stabilization Council set minimum price levels for domestic sales of TV and radio receivers; established profit-margin levels; boycotted nonmembers and denied foreign companies critical access to Japanese distribution networks. At the same time, the council worked with the Japanese government to raise a wall of tariff and nontariff barriers to foreign imports.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1990/09/30/japan-and-the-big-squeeze/0fb1617e-8756-4390-a776-f1619d59869a/?utm_term=.250d23f447d8
>Government officials helped by ensuring that U.S. exporters were harassed by import safety inspectors; the Electronics Industries Association of Japan persuaded Japanese distributors not to handle certain American TV products. U.S. television exports to Japan soon fell precipitously. Japanese manufacturers were thus able to sell a set for more than twice as much in Japan as they could abroad.
>Meanwhile, according to the U.S. Justice Department, Japanese manufacturers also had concocted a secret "double-pricing" scheme with the help of 80 American importers -- among them Sears and Alexander's. Through this scheme, the Japanese paid U.S. importers rebates of roughly $40 for each Japanese set. Japanese firms also provided offsetting discounts on other merchandise sold to TV importers, as well as payments disguised as "market research." To avoid detection by the U.S. government and lawsuits by American manufacturers, the participants in this scheme filed falsified documents with the Customs Service, citing what was known as the official "check price" as the amount they had received for each set. But there was no way for U.S. officials or American manufacturers to know how much importers were actually paying for Japanese goods.
>it's Japan's fault America can't operate an industrial policy or protect its own market
America turning its economy into a chaotic free-for-all doesn't make it "unfair" when other nations refuse to do so.
The Japanese certainly claimed it was unfair whenever foreign nations tried to protect themselves from Japanese dumping, and spent seven-figure sums lobbying American politicians to keep America open to Japanese exports (back when that meant something).
One-sided protectionism was good for Japan, not so good for America. What are we even arguing about? I suppose you're right though, fairness has nothing to do with it: still, I wonder what your motivation is, decades after the fact, to criticise those Americans who were willing to speak negatively about Japanese trade policy, and who wanted a better deal for Americans.
My motivation is to attack free trade ideology on the whole and the WTO-led international order.
Japan did it, it worked. America opened its markets to everywhere workers got paid pennies on the dollar and ended up a de-industrialized hollow shell of its former self.
>America opened its markets to everywhere workers got paid pennies on the dollar
That was the logical conclusion of trends that had already been happening in the US. If you have no problem moving production from Detroit to Alabama to lower costs, why then would Alabama to Busan or Guadalajara be such a leap?
>ended up a de-industrialized hollow shell of its former self
Depends on the industry. Many of them lost more employment than they did production, which was/is a secular trend. Changes in demand and technological progression made the integrated steel mills with tens of thousands of workers completely obsolete, for example.
free trade with the south was also a disaster tbh
40-50 years ago, mfg was 30% of GDP and finance was about 10%. Today those numbers are reversed. We deindustrialized
Free trade can work when those involved are actually operating in good faith. For example, the member states of the European Union really did take down trade barriers between their members, for the most part: British companies exporting cheese to France or Dutch companies exporting fruit to Ireland will not find sneaky tax audits or surprise "inspections" designed to give plausible deniability to what is in practice a desire to exclude as many foreign goods as possible.
Granted, that's possibly more the exception rather than the rule, but citing Japan to suggest that "free trade is always a delusion" and that protectionism is THE answer is also taking an extreme case.
Italy's economy literally exploded though.
>>The Stabilization Council set minimum price levels for domestic sales of TV and radio receivers; established profit-margin levels; boycotted nonmembers and denied foreign companies critical access to Japanese distribution networks. At the same time, the council worked with the Japanese government to raise a wall of tariff and nontariff barriers to foreign imports.
this sounds like a great policy if you want to have an industrial country and you're not the US
Not so good for Americans.
>American business
if you have a corporation in those countries it is, I guess.
It's not good for American corporations to lose market share to Japanese rivals, no.
americans can own rival corporations in japan tho
How is it "illegal" to set your own economic policies at home? If the US wanted they could have done the same, the only cost would be access to cheap, quality import goods and a cost levied on the consumer. Also super hypocritical when a dozen monopolies, all domestically nurtured by tariff barriers, took over the world economy for the US decades before
Ever since the US started toppling governments on behalf of private banks in the early 1900's
America's been frightened and threatened by yellow people since the 1850's.
Are they wrong to be?
I feel like the WASP Industrialist and Bankers were the real subversive threat
why would bankers be subversive when they've been in control for centuries?
Pat Choate wrote an excellent book "Agents of Influence," which describes in exhaustive detail the duplicitous, manipulative tactics the Japanese conglomerates and the Japanese government used to keep America open to Japan, while keeping Japan as closed as humanly possible to American goods.
He also did an interesting C-SPAN interview on the subject of his book, which is well worth taking a look at:
https://www.c-span.org/video/?14730-1/agents-influence
Bad enough that they held rallies against Japanese cars
Fun fact: the cyberpunk genre in the US sprung up mainly due to increased fears that Japan would eventually outmatch and buy out the US. You can see it with shit like Die Hard and Blade Runner
Working-class Americans who believed that Japan was playing dirty on trade and the auto trade in particular were right. Japan was keeping foreign cars out if its own market, while pushing Japanese auto exports to other countries including America.
>jap cars have better reputation than mutt cars
>T-THOSE CONNIVING JAPS THIS IS PEARL HARBOR ALL OVER AGAIN
>>jap cars have better reputation than mutt cars
This argument never made sense to me. If American cars were that bad, why were they able to make a decent mark in European and other foreign markets? And if poor US auto sales in Japan only reflected poor US auto quality specifically, why didn't European and later South Korean automakers manage to gain market share in Japan, either?
The only reasonable explanation is in fact, protectionism.
>Devalue the American dollar so it's more competitive with the rest of the developed world
>NOOO WAITU PIGGU RUIN EVERYTHING
This whole meme that the Plaza Accords were an American plot to take down Japan specifically is an absurdity, since it involved not just the Japanese yen, but also the dollar rate relative to the currencies of America's other main trading partners too, like West Germany.
try telling the Japanese that
DESU, the Plaza Accords meme is more of a Chinese thing, although I have no doubt that many Japanese are probably also at least familiar with it.
The japenese used to make extremely fucking shit goods. It used to be the china of the 60s and 70s. I doubt it was because jap cars were better than american ones.
This is a common myth. Japan does not impose tariffs on imports of foreign cars. Zero. While America impose 2.5& tariff on imports of Japanese cars. In fact, German cars are selling well in Japan. American cars are simply not attractive to the Japanese.
It's not tariffs keeping American cars out of Japan, it's Japan itself http://cnnmon.ie/2tVmsTa
Roughly 4 million cars are sold in Japan every year and only 1/10 of those are imported.
Japan has a strict control of cars, you have to change them every 5-10 years or something crazy like that. And people will buy the same product they already bought before. They only needed to grab hold of them for a while to secure the market
This is because imported cars are treated as luxury cars in Japan for historical reasons. For example, the Volkswagen Golf, originally a commoner's car like the Corolla, is positioned as a luxury, pretentious car in Japan. The cause is not tariffs, but brand strategy.
I've noticed not just the Japanese, but most of America's Asian trading partners use this tactic of suggesting that for Americans to ever criticise their trade practices (and to suggest a harder line be taken against them by Americas) is a demonstration of weakness, being afraid, being insecure, etc. But somehow when Asians do the same the other way around, it's just patriotism, common sense, noble, just pursuing their own interest.
That's how propaganda works. Everything becomes good or bad depending on if it benefits you. Rigid, universal principles are the gallows upon which you will be hung.
I wonder, then, why there are there so many (presumably non-Japanese) posters ITT reflexively taking the side of the Japanese for no particular reason.
Oikiophobia. look it up
World's run by hypocritical assholes. It's just the human condition.
Imagine being from a country that literally invaded a country to protect a corporation and complaining that protectionist countries are evil.
Don't you know Protectionism and state planning is communism?
Is protectionism good or not ?
I thought America was always about free trade and free markets and what not
protectionism is good for the people in the protectionist country. The US is a global super power so protectionism is bad for their corporations. How are you gonna make candy bars without slave lavor in the third world?
>protectionism is good for the people in the protectionist country.
Strongly depends. Absent other developments/structural reforms, it drives up prices and decreases quality of goods they have access to. For people/producers in a particular sector, it's good, but that doesn't inherently generalize i.e. if domestic steel producers can get 'protection', the price of everything that uses steel will be higher, which is a detriment to anyone consuming steel.
And there's no guarantee that the protected sector will/can reinvest to increase productivity.
usually protectionist policies include provitions for that. The state also buys from those companies pushing money into them. You see tariff only policies in countries that already too tied to the international market to do anything about it, like the US.
>usually protectionist policies include provitions for that.
'Provisions' don't mean anything. You can't make a competent industry by edict, which is why industrial policy in the third world continuously failed. And doing competent industrial policy requires an uncommon level of state capacity, lest you get another License Raj.
>pushing money into them.
Money which is ultimately coming from everyone else in society. Done wrong (how it's most often done), you're just giving one sector rents which won't achieve any greater effect.
>like the US
The US lacks the competence, knowledge, patience, or political imagination for actual industrial policy.
>'Provisions' don't mean anything. You can't make a competent industry by edict,
Are you saying policies can only work if they're perfect and applicable to any scenario? It sometimes works, sometimes doesn't, like anything.
But you can totally force companies to reinvest in the economy, hire more people, payed fixed wages, accept unions, etc. It's not rare at all.
>which is why industrial policy in the third world continuously failed.
Every time this type of policies have been applied in the third world they have worked. Then you have a free market government saying the industry is choked, takes them out, and the money evaporates while the industry is replaced by importations. It happens every 10 years in almost every latin america country.
>Money which is ultimately coming from everyone else in society. Done wrong (how it's most often done), you're just giving one sector rents which won't achieve any greater effect.
Just like all income a corporation has. If I sell burguers that money comes from people. If I build roads I could charge each person or the state could take that money through taxes and pay for it.
>The US lacks the competence, knowledge, patience, or political imagination for actual industrial policy.
nah, it just doesn't want to. It could do anything it wants, no one could stop it. But it's not the plan they have.
>policies can only work if they're perfect and applicable to any scenario?
I'm saying it doesn't do anything that isn't already happening. Contrast it with export-oriented industrialization.
>hire more people, payed fixed wages, accept unions
Which represent transfers from everyone else to that sector.
>they have worked.
Getting 'a' domestic industry in whatever category? Yes, of course. Merely a matter of money. Getting a good one, one that actually develops and improves its own capacities, and the country? No.
>Just like all income a corporation has
The 'trick' is to create a system that organically drives improvements in quality; more output on the same population base gives a wealthier country. Otherwise, you're just shifting money around and the country goes nowhere, which has been the general experience with it and other barriers.
Countries recognize the abstract problem, which is why they often launch infrastructure projects to better connect parts of themselves together, rather than letting communication/travel barriers 'protect' industry in the various regions.
You see the ridiculous IP protections baked into modern Free Trade agreements? It's always been free-trade for your market and protections for mine.
Protectionism is how you get wealthy, free trade is how you keep your wealth and stop anyone else getting any. All the major free trade proponents (Britain, Germany, US etc.) embraced protectionism at earlier stages of economic development to build up, then shifted to free trade when they were developed enough
It's not free trade if one side is putting up barriers.
How come Japan gets this treatment in American Media while China never ever did even on a bad day?
this were all fringe books, it's the same as Fox News blaiming China for everything. The difference is that no one makes propaganda books anymore.
There were movies out there where Japs were bad guys. Robocop comes to mind.
Crichton, Clancy, and Kennedy were hardly fringe. Stupid but not fringe.
Back To The Future II also comes to mind. And Die Hard (although the Japanese boss wasn't the villain).
>Crichton, Clancy, and Kennedy were hardly fringe. Stupid but not fringe.
yeah, but most of those books were. Those authors have made stories where China is the bad guy too, haven't they?
Japan doesnt have 1 billion people and a government that can censor your movie/book/entire corporation to the loss of millions of dollars.
Were you asleep the entire decade 2000-2010? Mutts were terrified of Chinese IP theft/trade shenanigans and the PLA pulling some shit and starting the next world war. Hell they're still seething about China now too but it's a bit less acceptable to be anti-China these days because of Blumpf and StopAsianHate or whatever.
Lol what? Where have you been the last 5 years. Hell the last 50 years the CCP has been on the verge of collapse from a democratic revolution
And now they have strong China, nice work America. Not the first failure in foreign politics in Asia
yes
Yes American culture is characterized by a deep seated fear and malice towards swarthy people who are better than them
Yes, people thought Japan was on track to become essentially what China became. Of course by the time China rose, people in power no longer saw that as a problem, just a business opportunity.
They're used to being on top, especially the boomer generation, so psychologically speaking they can't really deal with this sort of thing. Most countries get bossed around by America but selling a few cars more than them and they enter a spastic fit.
Yes despotic orientalism has been a thing for thousands of years.