The 37th annual U.S.-Japan Business Conference that met in Tokyo last month reflected the vast changes that have taken place in the U.S.-Japan economic relationship over the past 10 years.

When I attended my first Business Conference a decade ago, I had just joined AT&T after nearly five years at the Office of the United States Trade Representative. That 27th conference, held in Osaka in July 1990, came immediately after the Bush administration and the Kaifu Cabinet had reached a settlement on the Structural Impediments Initiative, in which Japan agreed to undertake reform in six areas: distribution system; land-use policy; infrastructure investment; keiretsu; exclusionary business practices; and the differential in pricing of products sold domestically and abroad. The Bush administration had pursued SII in 1989 and 1990 largely in response to pressures from the U.S. Congress expressed in the form of the Trade Act of 1988 and its Super 301 provision.

Despite the numerous trade agreements concluded between the two countries in the late 1980s and early 1990s, problems of market access and trade imbalances persisted. This was reflected in the many complaints voiced by American executives at the Business Conference over such issues as automobiles, automobile parts, semiconductors, supercomputers, flat glass, photographic film, insurance and financial services. These issues became even more prominent as a result of the U.S.-Japan Framework Talks agreed to between U.S. President Bill Clinton and then Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa after the G7 summit in Tokyo in July 1993.