Last week, on the same day Japan finally jostled its way into the Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade talks with the U.S. and 10 other nations, petitions signed by more than 80,000 Ford, Chrysler and General Motors workers were sent to U.S. Congress members, urging that Japan be forced to stop rigging its currency to subsidize exports and keep out imports.
Haven’t we seen this movie before?
It was 23 years ago that President George H.W. Bush got sick at dinner in Tokyo during a trip where he was wrangling over automotive trade issues with Japan, accompanied by the Detroit auto CEOs of that era — Chrysler’s Lee Iacocca, GM’s Bob Stempel and Ford’s Red Poling.
Today, this kind of chronic yammering between the two nations with the 21st Century’s most productive and sophisticated economies just seems so, well, 20th Century — right?