In the 1980s, American politicians, Democrats and Republicans, as well as business and union leaders, argued that Japan wasn’t playing by the rules. President
Ronald Reagan imposed import quotas
and tariffs, arguing that Japan was dumping products into the US, selling for less than the cost of production in order to gain market share.
Here’s the counter story: Sony, Toyota and Honda were just building better products than US companies.
Back then, Americans were also becoming enthralled by a young New York real estate tycoon. He paid $100,000 to print an “Open letter from Donald J. Trump” in several newspapers. Trump wrote, “Let’s not let our great country be laughed at anymore.” Then Trump went on the Oprah Winfrey Show.
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Trump also took his message to Phil Donahue, Larry King and David Letterman.
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Trump didn’t just talk about the problems he saw with Japan. “He talked about how if he were president, he was going to fix this,” says Jennifer Miller. “And he talked about how the reason Japan was able to do this was because America’s current leadership was stupid.”
Trump talked about putting up barriers to imports, making Japan increase its defense spending and paying the US a tax. Sound familiar?
“You can trace so much of his rhetoric back to the 1980s that I think he hasn’t actually updated it that much,” says Miller, who recently authored a research paper entitled “Let’s Not be Laughed at Anymore: Donald Trump and Japan from the 1980s to the Present.”