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"The level of anti-Japanese trade feeling is higher than ever before," says Secretary of Commerce Malcolm Baldrige. One notable example: resolutions calling on Ronald Reagan to take action against alleged Japanese dumping of microchips and the lack of market access for U.S. chipmakers passed both House and Senate without a single dissenting vote. California Republican Pete Wilson introduced the Senate resolution by resorting to the crudest sarcasm: "Unlike in all of those grade-B Japanese horror movies, the Japanese semiconductor Godzilla is now destroying everything but Tokyo." The U.S., said Wilson, should strike back "even if our retaliation . . . precipitates a trade war. Indeed, the point is that we are already at war with Japan."
Wilson's rhetoric is overheated even by Washington standards. But foreign- trade experts inside and outside government, including some who consider themselves dedicated free traders, sound just slightly less exasperated. Says one Administration official who has sat in trade negotiations: "The Japanese always wait until the 59th minute of the eleventh hour before they make any concessions. Even then they won't move, because they want to improve the relationship or because they recognize the validity of the ((U.S.)) argument. They just move because they are forced to." C. Fred Bergsten, director of the Institute for International Economics, a Washington think tank, agrees: "They give us very clearly the message that they only move when hit over the head by a two-by-four. So, we will accommodate and hit them over the head."
Outside Washington, however, attitudes are nowhere near as bellicose. Indeed, polls consistently turn up a surprising amount of admiration for the Japanese and their business prowess. In a poll for TIME by Yankelovich Clancy Shulman two months ago,* respondents declared 51% to 23% that Japanese work harder than Americans. By 53% to 25%, they judged Japanese corporations to be better managed than U.S. companies. The upshot: most respondents deemed Japan's success in world trade to be well earned. Though half of those polled believed that the Japanese engage in unfair trade practices, only 24% thought those practices were the main reason for their export success. Some 68% believed that the Japanese have been capturing markets around the globe primarily "because they produce quality products for a good price."
Answers to questions about Japan's invasion of the American market were far more mixed. Somewhat surprisingly, 50% of those surveyed thought U.S. products superior in quality to Japanese goods, vs. only 29% who believed Japanese merchandise to be better. But they, divided just about evenly on which products offer a better value for the price: 42% said American, 41% Japanese.