Speaker calls for accord

First President Bush made a bad impression on his recent trip to Japan. Then a Japanese politician labeled American workers lazy and illiterate. Now Japanese companies are caught dumping minivans into the U.S. market and underselling the U.S. auto part industry. Clearly, recent Japanese and U.S. trade relations have not been good. But according to Michael Quinlan, both Japan and the United States can benefit more from joint trade cooperation than from country bashing trade restrictions. Quinlan, a Wharton MBA graduate, and the former Chief Financial Officer of IBM, delivered this message to the Wharton Undergraduate Students for Awareness of International Markets. According to Quinlan, the trade defecit is not a problem of Japan versus the United States, but rather large, producer-oriented Japanese corporations against the rest of the world, including other Japanese companies. About one-third of Japan's corporations are producer oriented, Quinlan said. Their oligopolical market is characterized by a few large companies that limit supply in order to keep prices and profits high, he said. The high profits received in Japan are then used to subsidize inexpensive exporting abroad. The companies can then undersell domestic companies in order to gain market share. Quinlan argued that the problem can be solved through more anti-trust laws and stricter enforcement of present anti-trust and monopoly laws in Japan. In spite of its present prosperity, Quinlan showed that Japan's inflated real estate, shifting demographics, general increased propensity to spend among consumers and potential credit crunch could become real problems for both Japan and the United States. But Quinlan said he believes that the two economic superpowers have many options that would alleviate present tensions and help both economies. Japan could eliminate the small, trivial trade restrictions that make easy targets for Japan bashers, Quinlan said. And he added that the producer-oriented industries need more competition in order to lower prices for consumers. For the U.S., Quinlan stressed that the federal deficit, and the high interest rates it brings, need to be eliminated. "The deficit is unacceptable," he said. He also said that both countries could do a lot to create more joint U.S.-Japanese partnerships. "There's a lot of reasons why we need each other," he said. Though he answered questions during his speech, he also gave a question and answer period before finishing his speech with a multimedia presentation on the poem "Ulysses" by Alfred Lord Tennyson. The audience, consisting of members of AIM preparing for a trip to Japan over spring break, reacted positively to the speech. "I liked his way of putting the technology and culture of Japan in his lecture," Wharton evening school student Tim Hulton said. This is one of seven seminars for AIM, a student-run organization which began this semester. The organization is designed to raise understanding of international business through seminars and a spring break trip to Japan, the group's focus this semester. Wharton Masters of Business Administration students, Wharton faculty, American and Japanese business professionals, and Japanese government officials teach the seven seminars.