For Japan, the U. S. has traditionally held the role. But that was before Donald Trump.
Based on the country’s experience after the Second World War, popular opinion in Japan holds that the United States is the preferred superpower. Of course, Japan has agreed to many demands that it might have found to have been unpalatable over the past seventy years, but, even so, when the security guarantees are included, the general consensus has been that the United States is the preferred superpower. Now, though, with the emergence of the Trump administration, that consensus is being shaken.
The Japanese economy developed in tandem with the start of the Cold War and with the support of the United States, but several industries became major exporters to the United States, producing repeated bouts of trade friction. Typically, trade negotiations boiled down to voluntary restrictions on exports as a face-saving measure for the United States – the free market superpower – as it sought to protect its domestic industries. However, negotiations between Japan and the United States gradually came to include matters that went beyond specific industries. Emphasizing the distinctiveness of the Japanese economy, the so-called revisionists advocated reforms to the Japanese model and changes in the U. S. trade policy approach to Japan. Inhabiting the fringes of academic circles, these revisionists sought to peddle their own personal opinions, such as deregulating large-scale retailers to promote imports, or eliminating transactions between affiliated enterprises within the keiretsu corporate groups to promote imports of parts. They referred to the strong dollar, a result of the U. S. budget deficit, as a “misalignment,” and demanded large-scale currency manipulation through coordinated intervention. This became the Plaza Accord. Under the pretext of throwing open the “closed” Japanese market, nonmarket quantitative targets were introduced to set aside a fixed share of the market for semiconductors manufactured overseas.
When the Clinton administration took office, the Cold War had ended and the priority issue was to counter Japan, seen as an economic rival.
