ntentional holdup costs the importer lots of money as well as preventing timely delivery to the customer. Competing Japanese made goods are often exempt from these “consumer protection” laws as inspection is “done at the factory by the Japanese manufacturer”. As an example of a consumer "protection" law really created to prevent foreign competition in Japan, one may look at the auto industry. All non-Japanese cars that enter Japan today must be "safety-tested" by Japan for "safety to the consumer". The fee for this "safety-test" is several thousand dollars PER CAR imported and must be tolerated by the importer (and consequently the buyer) of the car. Cars made by Japanese companies (even if they originate from foreign Japanese plants such as the US Honda Accord plant) are exempt from the inspection and the fee since Japanese car companies are permitted to "safety" their cars themselves at their factories. The result of this practice is to make the prices of non-Japanese brand cars uncompetitive against Japanese brands sold within Japan. This law adds $5000 to the price of each US car for sale in Japan (Sato 97). To further discourage non-Japanese car purchases in Japan, auto insurance rates for non Japanese brand cars in Japan have been rigged by auto producers (who own many of the insurance companies) to be three times higher than rates charged for equivalent Japanese brand cars (Choate 156). It is these practices and laws that prevent US car companies from making headway in the Japanese market.Cartel or keiretsu is another financial strategy employed by Japan to conquer America economically. Keiretsu are business groupings that loosely linked “super-corporations”. Most of the Japanese companies whose brands we know and love here in the United States are in these cartels. Famous companies like Nissan and Toshiba are all in these cartels (Sato 147).This is important because each of the keiretsu has...
