More “Scientific” Trade Barriers

By: www.kekepana.com/blog

Western Electric 500 - too long
for Japanese faces?

I received an hilarious response to last week’s post about Japan’s history of “scientific” barriers to trade (and why Tokyo’s irritation at recent “scientific” bans on Japanese products is so ironic).

Tom Moore, a good friend who runs a Hawaii-based telecom equipment company called Tropical Telcom, has a long history in Asia and knows Japan well. In the early 1970s, Tom was working for Northern Telecom and was part of Nortel’s team trying to sell phones to Japan’s Nippon Telephone & Telegraph (NTT). [Tom and I didn't yet know each other, but I worked at the time on Washington's negotiations with Tokyo to get NTT to open up its procurements.]