美国国家公共电台 NPR Can A Reagan-Era Policy Offer An Alternative To Tariffs?

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It was 1981. A new Republican president with a background in the entertainment business was trying to jumpstart the U.S. economy out of a brutal¹ recession. The president pushed tax cuts. Then his administration had to come up with a plan to deal with trade. America's auto² industry was suffering as new competition came in from Japan. What the Reagan administration did about it has shaped the auto industry we see today in America. And NPR's Dustin Dwyer reports it could serve as an example for the Trump³ administration in its ongoing⁴ rancorous trade battles.

DUSTIN DWYER, BYLINE⁵: The man Reagan put in charge of his trade policy in 1981 was William Brock. Brock says at that time, Congress was looking to take tough action to stop Japanese car imports. Brock went to the Japanese and proposed a different solution.

WILLIAM BROCK: The thought was that if Japan would put some quiet, voluntary limits on their shipments, it would help ease the problem till we could walk through a transition period.

DWYER: This idea is what's known as a voluntary export restraint. Instead of a tariff⁶, which acts as a tax on imports, the restraint is more like a voluntary quota⁷. The Japanese carmakers agreed they wouldn't send more than a certain amount of cars to the U.S. each year. And the original deal was supposed to last three years. It ended up lasting⁸ more than a decade. But the point was it was a negotiated, long-term deal. Companies and customers could expect it wouldn't go away in a flash like a tariff can.

With the Japanese restraints in place, the Detroit Three rebounded⁹. In 1984, President Reagan made a trip to a Ford¹⁰ plant in Missouri. And he told workers there some had urged him to take a harsher approach to Japanese imports, to push tariffs¹¹ instead of voluntary agreements. Reagan wasn't having it.

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RONALD REAGAN: I believe if Americans work together to improve quality, become more productive, hold down costs and invest in tomorrow's technology, then we can outcompete, outperform and outsell the pants off anybody.

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DWYER: A study published in 1999 found that the voluntary restraints boosted profits for the Detroit Three by about $1.6 billion. And that's mostly because it made Japanese imports more expensive, so there's also a case that it hurt consumers. But the biggest and longest-lasting impact of the policy can still be seen today in places like Georgetown, Ky., Smyrna, Tenn., and Marysville, Ohio, places where Toyota, Nissan and Honda all built plants in the 1980s.

Susan Helper, an economist¹³ at Case Western Reserve University who has studied the auto industry, says the carmakers might have moved production to the U.S. at some point anyway, but the trade policy made it more urgent.

SUSAN HELPER: So I think it jump-started that sooner and maybe made it easier for automakers from other nations to come in as well.

DWYER: But Helper says the voluntary restraints weren't perfect because, she says, when the new plants came in, they didn't come with the same protections for workers that had been established at the Big Three. They were and are non-union shops.

HELPER: Some of the only non-union automotive plants in the world are in the United States as a result of this policy.

DWYER: So one lesson for today's ongoing trade disputes, at least according to Helper, is to make worker protections part of the policy. William Brock disagrees with this take. He says the new automotive jobs in the U.S. were a good thing, and getting involved in wages and benefits isn't what the government should be doing. But another big lesson from the Reagan policy in the 1980s is just how long the impacts can last. The restraints Brock negotiated in 1981 led to investments in the U.S. that are still here and still affecting the economy 37 years later. Dustin Dwyer, NPR News, Grand Rapids, Mich.

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