Uneasy Partnership: Competition and Conflict in U.S.-Japanese Trade Relations

If "the inefficient and the insensitive" confront one another, where are the mutual gains from economic exchange? In this first-rate study, Stephen Cohen, who has served in the U.S. government and on the U.S.-Japan Trade Council, concludes that the two countries "understand each other only slightly better" than they did 20 years ago. For the future he sees only "marginal changes in the basic forces," some of them coming from the shift to high technology and the increase in Japanese foreign investment. Nevertheless, there are many suggestions for improving matters.