In both Japan and in the United States, industrial associations play an important role in enhancing government understanding and interaction with industries and in easing cooperative efforts among firms. This report examines the role of industrial associations and related organizations in high-technology policymaking and in accelerating technological development.

Trade relations between the United States and Japan in the 1980s were marked by U.S. efforts to pressure Japan to absorb increasingly greater amounts of U.S. exports. The United States sought to improve its steadily worsening bilateral trade deficit with Japan by negotiating to lower barriers to U.S. exports through the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, the Market Oriented, Sector Selective Talks, the Super 301 process, the Structural Impediments Initiative, and other bilateral fora. The United States succeeded in having Japan take some market-opening measures, and despite fluctuations, U.S. exports to Japan of most of the products which were the subject of negotiations by the two countries between 1985 and 1990 have increased.