Aff – No I/L Econ or Enviroment

Aff- No Link- Japan- Public

Under these circumstances, these advocates see a strong need for the United States to work prudently and closely with traditional U.S. allies and associates. Their cautious approach argues, for example, that it seems foolish and inconsistent with U.S. goals not to preserve the long-standing U.S. stake in good relations with Japan and with friends and allies along the periphery of Asia and in Oceania. Their security policies and political-cultural orientations are generally seen as in accord with U.S. interests. Although opinion surveys sometime claim that the American public and some U.S. leaders see Japan as an economic competitive "threat" to U.S. well-being, these observers stress a different line of argument. They highlight the fact that few polls of U.S. public opinion or U.S. leaders support the view that it is now in America's interest to focus U.S. energies on the need to confront the Japanese economic threat, in a way that confrontation with the Soviet Union came to dominate U.S. policy during the Cold War.

In the early 1990's Japanese-American relations became increasingly heated with controversies over a wide range of issues, including Japanese attitudes toward American human rights policies with respect to China and other countries, Japanese participation in peacekeeping missions, and, most important, economic relations, especially trade. References to trade wars became commonplace. American officials, particularly in the Clinton administration demanded more and more concessions from Japan; Japanese officials resisted these demands more and more forcefully. Each Japanese-American trade controversy was more acrimonious and more difficult to resolve than the previous one. In March 1994, for instance, President Clinton signed an order giving him authority to apply stricter trade sanctions on Japan, which brought protest not only from the Japanese but also from the head of GATT, the principal world trading organization. A short while later Japan responded with a "blistering attack" on U.S. policies, and shortly after that the United States "formally accused Japan" of discriminating against U.S. companies in awarding government contracts. In the spring of 1995 the Clinton administration threatened to impose 100 percent tariffs on Japanese luxury cars, with an agreement averting this being reached just before the sanctions would have gone into effect. Something closely resembling a trade war was clearly underway between the two countries. By the mid 1990's the acrimony had reached the point where leading Japanese political figures began to question the US military presence in Japan. During these years the public in each country became steadily less favorably disposed towards the other country. In 1985, 87 percent of the American public said they had a generally friendly attitude toward Japan. By 1990 this had dropped to 67 percent, and by 1993 a bare 50 percent of Americans felt favorably disposed toward Japan and almost two- thirds as they tried to avoid buying Japanese products. In 1985, 73 percent of Japanese described U.S.- Japanese relations as friendly; by 1993, 64 percent said they were unfriendly. The year 1991 marked the crucial turning point in the shift of public opinion out of its Cold war mold. In that year each country displaced the Soviet Union in the perceptions of the other. For the first time Americans rated Japan ahead of the Soviet Union as a threat to American security, and for the first time Japanese rated the United States ahead of the Soviet Union as a threat to Japan's security.