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Some choice quotes I've acquired from Wikipedia:

    > The main area of noncooperation with the United States
    > [was] resistance to repeated United States efforts to
    > ... open its market more to foreign goods and to change
    > other economic practices seen as adverse to United
    > States economic interests.

    > The relative economic power ... was undergoing sweeping
    > change ... This change went well beyond the implications
    > of the United States trade deficit ... The persisting
    > United States trade and budget deficits ...
    > led to a series of decisions in the middle of the decade
    > that brought a major realignment of the value of ...
    > currencies ... the ability to purchase more United States
    > goods and to make important investments in the United
    > States [resulting in them being] the main international
    > creditor.

    > ... growing investment in the United States ... led to
    > complaints from some American constituencies ... seemed well     
    > positioned to use its economic power to invest in the
    > high-technology products in which United States ... were
    > still leaders. The United States's ability to compete under
    > these circumstances was seen by many ... as hampered by heavy
    > personal, government, and business debt and a low savings rate.
China since the turn of the millennium? No, Japan in the 1980s.

I am (and I suspect most of the readership is) too young to remember the fear the US felt about Japan in the 1980s, but a dense, ageing population and arguable a cultural rigidity capped growth.



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