In a few years, the United States has gone from worrying about Japan's economic might to worrying about its meltdown. The rise and fall of America's 'results-oriented' trade policy towards Japan captures this turnaround. Beginning in the mid 1980s, both Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush pursued a selective, results-oriented Japan policy. Bill Clinton went further in the 1990s, putting demands for quantitative targets in the Japanese market at the centre of US trade policy. But this policy was abandoned by Clinton's second term in office. And George W. Bush has shown little appetite for 'Japan bashing'.
John Kunkel traces this results-oriented Japan policy to a crisis in the institutions, laws and norms of the US trade policy regime in the first half of the 1980s. This arose from the erosion of America's post-war international economic dominance (especially vis-à-vis Japan) and the unintended consequences of Reaganomics. The regime crisis in turn paved the way for the progressive ascendancy of a coalition of 'hardliners' over 'free traders' after 1985. A process of learning in the American trade policy community that Japan was different from other major trading partners in terms of its structural barriers to imports was one element of this ascendancy. But strong Japanese opposition to the Clinton's Administration's Japan policy and a dramatic reversal of economic fortunes in the two countries by the mid 1990s saw the hardliners scale back their demands.
Kunkel combines research in economics, politics and history - including interviews with key policy-makers - to illuminate this important case study of American trade policy. His book offers theoretical insights and practical lessons on the forces shaping US trade policy at the start of the twenty-first century.