Trading Places

Shows how America is abdicating its future to Japan and offers some practical solutions for reversing this trend, along with providing an inside look at how the Japanese economic system works

A Washington business consultant and former government trade negotiator, Prestowitz here analyzes economic and cultural differences underlying our trade deficit with Japan and the U.S. decline in international markets. He also examines efforts to resolve our free-trade dilemma. Japan is a close-knit, exclusionary society, notes Prestowitz, with no room for U.S.-style individualism and little understanding of "fair" competition. Highly personalized Japanese companies with lifetime-employment policies cooperate as cross-shareowning groups to common advantage. By contrast, argues the author, when rival giants IBM and AT & T cautiously held back, independent young physicists and engineers"the small and the swift"created a spectacular global electronic industry, which Japan's government and industry, acting in concert, proceeded to preempt through investment, imitation and intense product development. Near-dominance in the American market ensued. What to do? Whatever the answer, readers of this book will understand far better the question.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

$19.95. econ Written by a veteran U.S. trade negotiator with Japan, this book discusses the economic and institutional differences that led to U.S.-Japan trade imbalances. As in The Reckoning by David Halberstam ( LJ 12/15/86), the differences are seen through the eyes of two companies (here Motorola and Nippon Electric Company). Prestowitz also provides an inside view of recent U.S.-Japanese trade negotiations by a participant. Recommended for its nontechnical discussion and realistic solutions that don't require a grandiose transformation of the U.S. economy. Richard C. Schiming, Mankato State Univ., Minn.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.