ABSTRACT
“Why is the West obsessed with our exports”? every Japanese visitor asks. “The Germans export even more and their trade surpluses are also growing rapidly.” But there is a difference, though the Japanese are oblivious to it. The Germans do indeed top the Japanese as exporters of manufactured goods: only the United States exports even more of them than the Germans. But the Germans are also the world's second-largest importers of such goods—again topped only by the United States. The Japanese, however, only sell; they do not buy. They practice adversarial trade.
