The Japanese Challenge/P334

  As far as I can tell, free trade has been practiced only four times in all of history. One is in textbooks. The three real-world practitioners were he Dutch, briefly; the English at the beginning of the indusia Revolution; and the United States after World War ll
     the English could do it two hundred years ago because
 they bad no real competition. As soon as other industrial economies developed, England abandoned free trade
     Similarly, the United States once had the world to itself Over the years our dominance has eroded, but in our heads. we re still trapped in 1947
     Free trade is fine-as long as everyone is playing by the same rules. But Japan has its own rules, so we are constantly at a disadvantage
     Here's how it works. When a Japanese car is put on a boat for the United States, the Japanese government rebates about S800 to the manufacturer. That's a commodity tax rebate, and it's perfectly legal under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade(GATT). In other words, a housewife in Tokyo pays more for a Toyota than she would in San Francisco
     How should we respond? well, in Europe they routinely slap on a border tax to offset the rebate that the Japanese provde for their exports.
艾柯卡这总结很有意思啊。每日当年的商业战已经使美国做好准备不做自由贸易了，现在中国出来挑战，再复习一遍。