China is not Japan, US should know that

"When governments permit counterfeiting or copying of American products, it is stealing our future, and it is no longer free trade." So said former US president Ronald Reagan, commenting on Japan after the Plaza Accord was concluded in September 1985. These times, in many respects, are a remake of this 1980s movie, but with a reality-television star replacing a Hollywood film star in the presidential leading role - and with a new villain in place of Japan.

Back in the 1980s, Japan was portrayed as America's greatest economic threat - not only because of allegations of intellectual property theft, but also because of concerns about currency manipulation, state-sponsored industrial policy, a hollowing out of US manufacturing, and an outsize bilateral trade deficit. In its standoff with the United States, Japan ultimately blinked, but it paid a steep price for doing so - nearly three "lost" decades of economic stagnation and deflation. Today, the same plot features China.

Japan, China both scapegoats of US own economic problems