ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the trading experiences of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON) and Japan and with developing trends that can be expected to persist throughout the 1980s. It focuses on the East European members of COMECON. The chapter points out that Japan has a worldwide market system, which includes most countries in the socialist camp. As Japan was a superpower in the global economy, especially during the 1970s and 1980s, its approach to international trade, technology transfers, finance, and aid is a matter for close scrutiny in the policy councils of its many commercial customers, not just its competitors. Japanese trade with Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Romania within COMECON–as well as with Yugoslavia–is an uneven affair because Japan must sometimes cope with several factors at once. The Soviet-styled mode of industrial policy organizes politics and economics in ways quite different from those in Japan and the industrial West.
