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Dan Hilliard, a manufacturing engineer at the Japanese-owned Nissan truck plant in Smyrna, Tenn., has no doubt that the Japanese unfairly keep out American goods. Nissan has sent him to Japan three times for training, where, he reports, "I saw very few American products on the market there, whereas here Japanese products are all over the place." Consequently, he believes the "U.S. Government is justified" in placing restrictions on Japanese imports. Yet Hilliard has praise for the management methods of his employer. Nissan's profits in Smyrna are down, he says, because "parts from Japan cost much more than they did one year ago" as a result of the rising exchange rate of the yen against the dollar. "But job security is one of the things the company stressed when I started in 1981, and Nissan is trying to keep its promise and keep everybody on. If I had been at Ford, Chrysler or General Motors, I would probably have been in the streets by now."
Joe Henson, president of Prime Computer, an export-oriented company located on Route 128 near Boston, believes the U.S. is taking a "reasonable and cautious approach" in trade policy toward Japan. "We have to be able to sell things like supercomputers and our American construction services" in Japan, he says, and if it takes retaliation against Japanese products to open Tokyo's markets, so be it. But Henson has no illusions that trade policy alone can solve the U.S.'s problem of regaining competitiveness in world markets. "We have major challenges within our own economy," he says. "We have to cut costs, improve quality and understand market requirements. The U.S. is consuming more than it is producing. We are borrowing money to do it, and we have become a debtor nation. We ourselves have to deal with this problem of overconsumption, or we will be forced to stop it."
This idea that the U.S. is responsible for many of its own trade difficulties, whatever practices the Japanese follow, runs through comments by many people much less expert than Henson on world economics. Says Sheila Saunders, office manager for a monthly magazine in Atlanta: "There was not enough foresight to see that Japan would eventually outproduce us. Basically, we did not meet the competition. We need to advance our technology to produce quality products cheaper."
Perhaps the most striking thing about these and many other viewpoints is that they are expressed with a complete absence of the fiery anti-Japanese rhetoric so currently fashionable in Washington. The public is worried about Japanese competition, disposed to believe that much of that competition is unfair, and willing to consider some limited retaliation. But it has considerably more than a sneaking suspicion that much of the blame for the American trade deficit can be placed right within the borders of the U.S., and it is in no mood to give up its Sonys, Toyotas or Minoltas. Congress and the Administration are impressed by the cries of protectionist lobbyists and justifiably annoyed by the frustrations of negotiating with the Japanese. But one question for them to ponder as they plot strategy is this: What if a trade war starts between the U.S. and Japan, and American consumers do not answer the call to arms?
FOOTNOTE: *This survey was conducted by telephone February 17 and 18 among 1,014 adult Americans.