Another silly trade war between the US and Japan is looming, this time over telecommunications and medical equipment, and the US is threatening Japan, which scarcely has a government at present, with sanctions if the two sides fail to reach agreement during a 60-day consultation period, on which the clock started ticking over the weekend; We do not intend to negotiate under the pressure of sanctions said Kozo Igarashi, chief spokesman for Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama’s government; US telecommunications equipment companies complain that unfair manoeuvering by the largely government-owned Nippon Telephone & Telegraph Corp has cheated them out of a share of the $10,000m market.
