Country Risk Assessment on Japanese Imports of Drugs :: Economics Politics

Country Risk Assessment on Japanese Imports of DrugsaccountJapan, being the worlds most dynamic exclusivelyy competitive nation, is go ab emerge an ironic balance in trade with the U.S. The Japanese economy relies withal heavily on exports, especially to the U.S., causing increasing trade surpluses. They throw off been in a repetitive cycle for the last 25 eld in which the government allows the yen to fall against the dollar to boost exports and ensnare domestic growth to dampen imports. The Japanese government has set alike many trade restrictions on U.S. imports, trying to compete against and keep out American imports.This all began during the postwar period when Japan imposed corpulent import barriers. Virtually all products were subject to government quotas, many face up high tariffs, and the Ministry of International and guile Industry (MITI) had authority over the parcelling of foreign exchange that companies needed to pay for any import. These policies were just ified at the time by the weakened position of the Japanese industry and the democracys chronic trade deficits. By the late 1950s, however, they had regained balance and could non justify their payment system. Despite Japans rather good record on tariffs and quotas, it continued to be the target of complaints and pressure from its trading partners during the 1980s. These complaints revolved rough non-tariff barriers other than quotas, which included standards, testing procedures, government procurement, and other policies that were be employ to restrain imports.Import PoliciesIn 1984 the United States government initiated intensive negotiation with Japan on four product areas forest products, telecommunications equipment and services, electronics, and pharmaceuticals and medical equipment. The food market Oriented Sector Selective (MOSS) talks were aimed at routing out all overt and informal barriers to imports in these areas. The negotiations lasted throughout 1985 and achiev ed small(a) success. Supporting the take hold of that Japanese markets remained difficult to penetrate, statistics showed that the level of manufactured imports in Japan as a share of the gross national product was still out-of-the-way(prenominal) below the level in other developed countries during the 1980s. Frustration with the modest results of the MOSS process and similar factors led to provisions in the United States Trade Act of 1988 aimed at Japan. Under the Super 301 provision, nations were to be named as partial trading partners and specific products chosen for negotiation, as appropriate, with retaliation against the exports of these nations should negotiations fail to bring home the bacon satisfactory results.