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Text: Zhang Runchen
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introduction
In recent years, the United States, along with its eastern and western allies, has launched a trade war against the mainland and imposed heavy sanctions on Chinese companies. From Trump to the Biden administration, sanctions on Chinese companies have been increasing, and by April 2024, the Biden administration has put 319 Chinese companies on the "blacklist".
After feeling the pressure, some people once came up with such remarks: "Admitting mistakes to the United States may make the United States abandon sanctions?" ”
The person who put forward such a statement may not understand a truth, "the truth is only within the range of the cannon", a hundred years of modern history, the Qing Dynasty bowed its head to the foreign powers and admitted its mistakes, in exchange for what?
If we want to seriously discuss this issue, the trade war between Japan and the United States in the seventies and eighties of the last century, when Japan gave in to the United States, is perhaps the best example.
(Japan)
1. Seon is not blessed if he loses his horse
After World War II, the attitude of American society towards Japan was extremely hostile, and this attitude was like the attitude of the French towards Germany after World War I, and they were eager to dismember it directly. In fact, the situation faced by post-war Japan was only as good as that of Germany under the Versailles system.
According to the post-war layout of the United States, Japan should be a "neutral country" similar to Austria, while China and South Korea are the bridgeheads of the United States on the Asian continent.
Therefore, after the war, the United States imposed very harsh punishments on Japan, including demanding a huge compensation package, dismembering the Japanese consortium without considering the Japanese economy at all, and carrying out cultural "democratic reforms" in Japan.
In the first five years after the war, Japan experienced a difficult period of economic decline, but with the end of the Chinese Civil War and the outbreak of the Korean War, Japan's situation suddenly changed. Beginning in 1948, the United States began to change its punitive economic policy toward Japan and instead began to support the Japanese economy.
(Doqi)
The "Dodge Route" that the United States demanded of Japan did not fully take into account Japan's actual economic environment, and although the forced transformation of Japan into an export-oriented economy stabilized Japan's currency and inflation, it also led to Japan's economic depression.
However, immediately after the Korean War brought a huge demand for arms purchases to the US military, Japan ushered in the first major economic development after the war by helping the US military produce arms and logistics materials, which is known as the "Korean War Boom" in history.
The US military's demand for arms purchases accounted for 27 percent of Japan's exports that year, and Japan has since tasted the sweetness of exports. At the same time, the economic ties between Japan and the United States have become increasingly close. In the early days of Japan's economic take-off, Japan's dependence on the United States was much higher than that of the United States.
Because Japan needs to import technology from the United States and a large amount of raw materials from the United States, the United States can control the Japanese economy. By 1955, the Japanese economy had returned to its pre-war maximum, and the Japanese government began to try to break free from American economic control.
(Japan)
In 1956, the government proposed the "Five-Year Power Plan", which mainly replaced domestic coal power generation with oil power generation, which in turn led to the modernization of Japan's industrial equipment. The demand for equipment revitalized the Japanese economy, which had been dormant after the Korean War, and thus triggered the "Jimmu boom".
The "Jimmu boom" was followed by the "Iwato boom", because of the overall improvement of equipment and the broad market demand, Japan's major companies in the field of consumer goods to show their skills. Household appliances such as automobiles, semiconductor radios, televisions, and refrigerators began to replace textiles as Japan's main exports.
In 1965, Japan achieved its first trade surplus with the United States. After the rapid expansion of the Japanese economy, the "Izono Boom" began, which was the longest period of rapid economic growth in Japanese history and the golden age of the Japanese economy.
(Japan)
In 1968, Japan's GDP surpassed that of the Federal Republic of Germany to become the world's second largest economy, and since then Japan has maintained its economic position until the 21st century. In 1970, Japan already occupied the first place in the world in the fields of shipbuilding, semiconductor radio, television, etc., and ranked second in the world in the fields of steel, automobiles, synthetic rubber, etc.
At that time, Japan had enough money to buy all the land in the United States three times, and Japanese businessmen did go to the United States to buy assets in large quantities. At its peak, even the Empire State Building and the World Trade Center were Japanese assets, and the Yamaguchi-gumi were even able to buy casinos in Las Vegas.
At this time, the United States finally began to be wary of Japan.
(Japan)
Second, groveling will not save Japan
In fact, the first economic sanctions imposed by the United States on Japan did not take place in the seventies, but in 1956.
At that time, the Japanese textile industry was gradually recovering, and a large number of Japanese textiles flowed into the American market. Therefore, the American Light Industry Association asked Congress to restrict the import of Japanese textiles, and in the same year, the Japanese government took the initiative to implement "voluntary export restrictions in the textile industry" in order to avoid the intensification of contradictions.
However, the United States was not willing to give up, and in 1957, the Japanese government was forced to sign the "Japan-US Cotton Fabric Agreement" with the United States, and the Japanese textile industry began to decline. This was also the first time since the war that the United States imposed economic sanctions on Japan, and although the Japanese government groveled, it did not achieve the desired results.
In the seventies, Japan's huge trade surplus with the United States caused the United States to fall into a fiscal deficit crisis step by step, and the United States was gradually becoming the world's largest debtor, while Japan was gradually becoming the world's largest creditor. This situation must change, otherwise the United States will inevitably lose its hegemony.
(Japan)
In 1974, the United States introduced the Trade Act of 1974, the most significant change of which was Section 301, which granted the United States the right to investigate other countries that he deemed "unfair trade" and to retaliate in any "reasonable" manner. This can be regarded as the beginning of the "long-arm law enforcement" of the United States, which began to carry out the "Section 301 investigation" against Japan in 1975.
The United States began to impose unilateral sanctions on Japanese automobile, semiconductor, steel and other industries, and this time the sanctions were far more deadly than the one in the sixties. In addition, the U.S. government has begun a lengthy "anti-dumping lawsuit" against Japan with the intention of further curtailing Japan's exports to the United States.
In the early days of the sanctions, the Japanese government still adopted an attitude of "calming things down." The first step for the Japanese government is to change its control economy, lift export restrictions, and fully open its market to the United States. Japan wants to "I'll let you in" in exchange for "you let me in," but there is no doubt that this is not enough to satisfy the United States.
(Japan)
Soon after, Japan began to impose its own "export cap", but this does not mean that Japan is not going to make money.
The Japanese government is calculating that it hopes to increase foreign investment by Japanese companies in this way, because there is an "export cap" on goods produced in Japan. Therefore, Japanese companies, whose markets are mainly in the United States, can only transfer their production to the United States or other countries.
Countries such as China, Singapore, and Malaysia all took over the production of a large number of Japanese companies during this period. Japan's high-end manufacturing industry has shifted to the United States in large quantities, and has been able to achieve "self-production and self-sale in the United States". Domestically, it has shifted its main industries to knowledge-intensive industries, while targeting exports to a rising China to reduce trade frictions with the United States.
However, even though the Japanese government has made so many efforts to ease trade relations with the United States, this time the United States is determined to bring the Japanese economy to a complete collapse. Therefore, no matter how groveling the Japanese government is, it will not be able to get the United States to let Japan go in the end.
(Plaza Accord)
Third, the exchange rate war
In the 80s, the United States began to wage a "decisive battle of exchange rates" against Japan, that is, it tried to make other countries' products lose their competitiveness in the international market by appreciating their currencies. In addition to Japan, the Federal Republic of Germany, France, and the United Kingdom were also included in the attack, but Japan was the focus of the United States at that time.
The final result of the "exchange rate showdown" was the signing of the Plaza Accord in 1985 at the Plaza Hotel in New York, and the Japanese economy was destined to tragedy. But the Plaza Accord alone was not enough to satisfy the United States, and in February 1987, these countries signed the Louvre Accord together.
This agreement completely wiped out the absolute superiority of Japanese products in the international market, and the volume of US exports to the outside world expanded rapidly in a short period of time. The United States has entered the "nostalgic eighties", but the American people who do aerobics in Los Angeles and New York do not think that their happy life in the eighties is actually based on the economic stagnation of other capitalist countries.
(Japan's bubble economy)
After the two agreements, Japanese capital burst out with an extremely strong desire to survive, and a large amount of capital turned to regions such as Singapore and Hong Kong. Those capitals that failed to escape from Japan also began to move into real estate and finance, and the Japanese economy began to "shift from real to virtual" in an all-round way.
Although this has not caused a large-scale recession in the short term, and even maintained a relatively strong development trend, it has also further raised the Japanese housing bubble. At the same time, the two exchange rate agreements did not completely solve Japan's trade surplus with the United States, so in the 90s, the United States again forced Japan to sign the "U.S.-Japan Structural Obstacles Agreement".
This agreement gave the United States the power to "point out the problems that exist in the Japanese economy and demand that the Japanese government correct them," and the Japanese government effectively sold its economic autonomy to the United States. In 1991, a year after the agreement was signed, Japan's real estate bubble burst completely, yes, the Americans.
(Japan's economic collapse)
Japan's economic illusion collapsed in 1991, followed by the "Lost Decade", "Lost Twenty Years", and even "Lost Thirty Years". While South Korea is realizing the "miracle of the Han River", Japan is like a lazy Akita dog, nested in a corner and motionless.
It is true that many people today believe that the economic sanctions imposed by the United States on Japan in the seventies and eighties were not as severe as we say, and that Japan is still a developed country today, and it is still the third largest economy in the world. But what many people deliberately ignore is that Japan at that time should have had a better economy and life.
In the past trade war between Japan and the United States, Japan repeatedly backed down, not only failed to exchange for the tolerance of the United States, but allowed the United States to gain an inch, and finally stepped Japan into the mud and exchanged it for the prosperity of the American economy.
And then to the current Sino-US trade war, let's think about it from the perspective of the United States, in the face of a weak person, won't you get more benefits from it?
Resources:
[1] Chen Xiaoxiao. Research on Japan's response measures in the trade war between Japan and the United States[D].Central China Normal University,2020.
[2] Gong Feng. The impact of the Japan-US trade war on Japan's economy and trade[J].China Business Review,2020,(08):101-102.)
[3] Lian Dezhui. Sino-US trade war and Japan-US trade friction and alliance paradox[J].Asia-Pacific Security and Ocean Research,2020,(01):14-26+2.
[4] Li Ruifei. Reference and enlightenment of Japan-US trade war on Sino-US trade game[D].Heilongjiang Academy of Social Sciences,2018.