ABSTRACT
The 20 per cent market share target in the semiconductor agreement would remain a unique case. But in the aftermath of the trade regime crisis the line between process and results-oriented policy became blurred across a range of bilateral sectoral negotiations. After 1985, the administrations of both Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush adopted a selective, results-oriented policy, with grey-area agreements in such sectors as auto parts, telecommunications, supercomputer and computer procurement, glass and paper products. By 1992, the semiconductor agreement (renegotiated in 1991) was part of a policy record that included Japanese ‘voluntary’ import expansion measures (VIEs), actions designed to accommodate particular US companies in the Japanese market and progressively more detailed market access agreements, in some cases with quantitative criteria.
