ABSTRACT
The Community’s economic relations with East Asia are typified by a curious mixture of protectionism and cooperation. This chapter identifies how to improve this mixture in the short run and eradicate this protectionism in the long run to the mutual satisfaction of both sides. It focuses on Japan and Association of Southeast Asian Nations. In the European Community protection aims to protect jobs or redistribute incomes, and it tends to have the effect of slowing down adjustments considerably, that is, it restores technical efficiency. In Japanese protectionism, if the word “dialogue” is at all appropriate, the dialogue between Japan and the European Community on access to the Japanese market has long been one between two convinced camps. Long-standing protectionism and near-certainty about political responses favorable to laggard, vested interests cause the costs of sheltering to mount for the economy at large.
