Adam Tooze

Japan is a more clear-cut case of a national industrial country that really did assert itself.

Now overall, it's probably welfare enhancing because the stuff they made was high quality and cheap.

Wall Street in the end does begin to make footholds in Tokyo.

But I think that experience of the 70s and 80s is really...

is very formative and I think it just sort of reverbs around and he slots new countries into that space one after the other.

And that talk at the time was very commonplace, right?

That zero sum vision.

And there's an element, you know, the Germans and the Japanese did pursue within the fixed change rate system of Bretton Woods.

strategies, which meant their currencies were undervalued.

America, of course, in the early stages, in the 40s, 47, 48 Marshall Plan and so on, deliberately accepted that as the trade.

They would be part of the American hegemonic block in the Cold War, and American consumers would benefit from the inflow of relatively affordable, high-quality goods.

It didn't need to worry.

It would out-compete.

It would out-innovate.

It would rise to the top.

No stress.

Through the early 70s, that bargain works pretty well on balance.

Not, of course, for everyone in American society because of racism and inequality, but nevertheless,

standard of living go up, so you don't see that divide opening.

And it's really from the mid-70s that it breaks down.