ABSTRACT
Ambassador Mike Mansfield has often made the point that the most important bilateral relationship in the world is the one between the United States and Japan. Lee Iacocca, the head of Chrysler, criticized the trade imbalance while he himself aggressively imported from Japan. It is a terrible irony that those engines and automobiles are then accounted as Japanese exports to the United States, tipping the trade balance further in the direction of Japan. There are signs that the United States is waking up to the fact that international trade is the engine that drives the world economy. The world's economy depends on the United States dollar, and the dollar must be strong, based on a strong American industry. The Japanese automobile industry, in particular, is investing heavily in new plants in the United States and creating thousands of new jobs.
