CompuServe Messages

I'm probably going to get some sort of response to this :-), but here goes… I am in favor of hitting the Japanese (and any other country for that matter) with import duties or restrictions IF (BIG if) they are using unfair trade practices when exporting to the United States. Some business practices that are legal in Japan are NOT legal in the United States, such as "price fixing" or "dumping" (two separate issues). MITA also has a policy that in itself is illegal in the United States and is very much related to, if not the same as dumping, called Predatory Pricing. That would be the pricing of merchandise below the cost to produce it, in order to force a competitor to sell below cost and thereby eventually be removed from the target market. This is a tricky area of law (from what I understand; I'm not a lawyer). Not only does it have to be shown that the accused sold merchandise below cost, but that it does so on a continual basis and did so with the intent to damage its competitors financially, etc. etc. MITA executes this policy by funding Japanese companies in specific "market attacks", so to speak. MITA and any relevant companies it wishes to enlist purposely target certain markets (semi-conductor memories, for instance), and agree upon a strategy to take control of that Market from US competitors (I'm not making this up folks :-(. MITA then provides large sums of money (sometimes in the billions of YEN) to the Japanese firms in order that they might "dump" their products without fear of lost profit. The end result of all this is the eventual domination of a market through financial bullying. This is EXACTLY what happend to the US semiconductor memory market. Before MITA became involved, there were 12 US companies manufacturing semiconductor memories. Afterwards, there were 2, Micron Technologies and IBM. Well, I feel better after having said that ;-). Sorry about the digression, but its a real sore spot with me.