Trade Experience for Major Competitors Japan alone among the United States' major competitors saw its trade in high-tech manufactures produce larger and larger surpluses during the 1980s and into the early 1990s. Its trade in other manufactures produced stable surpluses from 1981 to 1987, but then turned to a deficit position as imports of other products surged, overwhelming Japan's small but continuing export growth in these industries. (See figure 6-9.) These diverging trends once again illustrate Japan's nearly complete conversion to an economy that has tied its future economic growth to the technology-intensive industries.

Concurrent with the erosion of the U.S. trade position in computer and office equipment has been the emergence of Japan as a global supplier of computer hardware-related products. In fact, the escalating trade surplus generated by Japan's high-tech industries as a group was largely driven by its computer and office equipment industry. Of the six industries included in the high-tech category, in 1992, Japan had a trade surplus in four (in order of contribution to its surplus in high-tech products): computer and office equipment, communications equipment, electrical machinery, and scientific instruments. (See figure 6-10.)

---

ContentsSearchContinue

---