ABSTRACT
As a case of United States (US)-Japanese trade conflict, the construction issue has some close parallels with the semiconductor conflict. American construction firms with extensive international experience and a proven record of competitiveness found themselves unable to secure large-scale construction contracts in Japan. There are over half a million licensed contractors in Japan, of whom 90 percent are small enterprises. The construction industry is Japan’s largest, employing about 5.5 million people, or nearly 10 percent of the Japanese work force. By the 1980s, at least some Japanese construction firms were beginning to move into overseas markets, including the US The Japanese argued that their public works system operated according to understood and clear rules and criteria and did not discriminate against foreign firms. The bilateral issue of construction began as, and much of the negotiations over the first stages involved, a dispute over one large construction project: the building of the new Kansai International Airport.
