1. A friend ours, working in Silicon Valley from the beginning, made and lost bundles of money, a sweet man, told us that in the good old days (10-15 years ago), a U.S. new high tech product that succeeded in the global market typically delivered 18 months of tech. rent. Over the years, this number has fallen to near zero, sez our informant. He gives as the main reason -- Taiwan -- which he regards as "ruthless," "engaged in unfair crooked practices," with "three sets of books" (for the firm, the government, and the customer) to fool everybody, etc. Our friend has gone to Taiwan many times, selling high tech stuff. Japan is a model of decoram, compared with Taiwan, sez he.
2. When we visited Japan in the winter of 1989 (I was asked to make a little lecture tour), we went to a technical school/factory in Kanazawa, where our hosts were thrilled that they could show off their new "mother machine" (which made textile machinery and machine tools for ordinary use, hence must itself have incredibly fine tolerances; I remember getting a laugh telling them that when I worked in a machine shop in 1949-50, our tolerances were +/- 5/1000 of an inch. They thought this was very funny). The mother machine, which was made in Germany, was not at all new, just new to Japan.
All of which is anecdotal evidence that suggests in its economic relations with the U.S., Japan is more like Korea or Taiwan than it is like Germany.
Jim O'Connor