The Japanese Industrial Presence in America: Same Bed, Different Dreams

Abstract

The Japanese epigram in the title of this chapter originally described mismatched marriage partners, but could equally be applied to the divergent and unrealistic expectations of both the US and Japan regarding the role of Japanese direct investment in America. The rapid increase in Japanese direct investment in the United States — by March 1988 the location for 38 per cent of total Japanese foreign direct investment and over half of Japanese outward FDI flows during the first half of the 1988 financial year — has provided further ammunition for one of America’s remaining growth industries: writing books about the declining US hegemony as a result of ‘imperial overstretch’.²

The United States welcomes foreign direct investment that flows according to market forces … We believe there are only winners, no losers, and all participants gain from it.

(President Ronald Reagan, 9 September, 1983)

This is one of the real national mistakes that’s going to haunt us for years to come. There is a strong sentiment on the part of the Western governors that there is something really wrong here. I do not want the Japanese coming in and buying up American technology. I do not want them in our state. I don’t want the Arabs owning our banks or the Japanese owning our means of production.

(Governor Richard Lamm [Colorado] 25 February, 1985)

In the winter of 1986 … a group of congressmen from Kentucky asked me to brief them before they travelled to Japan … At one point I asked whether they realized that for every Japanese plant that opened in Kentucky, an American one in Michigan was likely to close. Their response was, ‘We’re not the congressmen from Michigan’.

(Clyde V. Prestowitz, former Counsellor for Japan Affairs to the Secretary of Commerce)¹