Japan's government hyelped Japanese companies grow by supporting prosperous industries with search and development grants and allowing competing companies to work together to develop new technologies and products. The government's efforts were matched by Japan's well educated workers, who were able to adopt foreign technology and often improve it. With the help of Japan's government and industry, Japan's productivity rate grew faster than the United States productivity rate. In the 1960s, Japanese industries were turning out high quality consumer goods. Like ,for example, clothes, radios, televisions, cameras, and automobiles, and exporting them to other nations.
Trade is very important to Japan's economy.
Japan has few natural resources and therefore needs to import most of the raw materials it needs for manufacturing. To pay for these imports, Japan must sell finished goods to other nations. The United States became Japan's biggest customer, and by 1965 Japan was selling more products to the United States than it was buying from the United States, which is still the same today. The trade deficit between the United States and Japan has caused conflicts between the two countries. In the past twenty-five years, officials from both sides have tried to negotiate several agreements to increase United States exports and decrease Japanese exports in order to decrease the gap.