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Re:US Job Openings Decline to Lowest Level in More Than a Year by FuriouslyAdrift on Wednesday January 07, 2026 @12:56PM (#46529826)
Reagon and Congress directly negotiated with the Japanese auto manufacturers. They were threatening major tarrifs.

This lead to the 1981 automobile voluntary export restraint.

https://www.nber.org/system/files/chapters/c8719/c8719.pdf

Re:US Job Openings Decline to Lowest Level in More Than a Year by acdha on Wednesday January 07, 2026 @02:53PM (#46531617)
Yes: that’s kind of a textbook example of using tariffs strategically — there’s a valid argument that automobiles are a strategic industry worth protecting (just for military capacity alone) but they didn’t threaten to heavily tax coffee and chocolate from other continents at the same time or under the pretense that it would make those crops viable in the United States at scale.