Some of us remember that Japanese-made products really began to make an impact on the U.S. market in the 1980s. We began to see well-made cars, video cassette recorders, and microchips coming from our rival in the east.
As a result of the good products, the trade deficit between Japan and the United States became amazingly unbalanced. To many Americans, Japan became the enemy and people complained about unfair trade practices, manipulating currency as well as other tricks to make their products cheaper.
Fast forward to today. Everything we said about Japan we are now saying about China. They have become the new enemy. But instead of just complaining is there something we can do? Did we learn from our experience with Japan in the ‘80s?
Pundits say that the causes of trade disputes with China today are similar to those we had with Japan in the 1980s. Well, you know what? The reason why Japanese made products were selling well in the U.S. was because they were better made than American products. As a result, people bought Japanese goods because they preferred to.
Today Americans are buying products made in China because they are cheap and are of decent quality. We, as a country, have a tendency to blame other countries for our economic woos when we should have been blaming ourselves, pundits now say. Note we weren’t pushed into economic ruin by the Japanese in the 1980s, and we won’t be pushed into economic ruin by the Chinese in 2008 and beyond. What sustains us is our ability to create new technologies that are adopted by other countries later. Remember in the 1990s the U.S. experienced an economic boom due to our superiority in technology and Japan was taken down a peg or two as U.S. made goods featured good quality again and other nations like Korea began to compete with Japan. Today, we don’t look at Japan as our enemy as far as the economy is concerned. So our concerns about China today may be overblown, say pundits.
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