ABSTRACT
As Peter Dicken illustrates in Chapter 2, Japanese foreign manufacturing investment (FMI) in Western Europe was, until a decade ago, generally overshadowed by similar investment in North America and Asia, by Japanese investment in the European non-manufacturing sector, and indeed by the question of Japanese imports into the EC, particularly in motor vehicles. In the late 1980s this situation has changed somewhat as Japanese FMI has increased rapidly, with the number of projects doubling between 1986 and 1989, and as goods produced by Japanese companies within the EC-particularly motor vehicles and electronicshave become as important an issue as imports. This is manifested in a series of trade rows between Britain and France and Italy over the exports to these countries of UK-made Nissan cars. Indeed the local content issue has been the main focus of debate in the late 1980s and in the years preceding the unified market in 1992.
