Act of 1988 aimed at Japan. Under the "Super 301" provision, nations were to be named as unfair trading partners and specific products chosen for negotiation, as appropriate, with retaliation against the exports of these nations should negotiations fail to provide satisfactory results. Japan was named an unfair trading nation in 1989, and negotiations began on forest products, supercomputers, and telecommunications satellites. By the end of the 1980s, however, some internally generated changes in import policy appeared to be under way in Japan. The rapid appreciation of the yen after 1985, which made imports more attractive, stimulated a domestic debate over nontariff barriers and other structural features of the economy impeding imports. Greater openness in policies and structures began to be sought in response to domestic pressures rather than in response to foreign pressure and international obligation. External pressure for change also increased when the United States initiated a series of bilateral talks in 1989 parallel to negotiations under the "Super 301" provision. These new talks, known as the Structural Impediments Initiative, focused on structural features in Japan that seemed to impede imports in ways outside the normal scope of trade negotiations. Issues raised in the Structural Impediments Initiative, and by the Japanese themselves in domestic discussions, included the distribution system (in which manufacturers continued to have unusually strong control over wholesalers and retailers handling their products, inhibiting newcomers, especially foreign ones) and investment behavior that made it very difficult for foreign firms to acquire Japanese firms (such as that of the management of Koito Mfg. in denying board representation to T. Boone Pickens despite the fact that he had become the majority stockholder). These discussions highlighted some of the fundamental differences in the Japanese and United States economies. Pressure to raise imports peaked in the late 1980s and early 1990s when the US pushed for quantitative targets for more imports in semiconductors, autos and auto parts. Jagdish Bhagwati (1988) calls these policies Voluntary Import Expansion (VIE) policies. In general, these policies tended to have negative welfare effects (and usually higher prices) in theory (Greaney, 1996) and in practice (Dick, 1995) or little effect at all (Parsons, 2002). 1990s to 2010 The collapse of the Japanese asset price bubble in the early 1990s and the following Lost Decade helped to open inbound trade. Discount markets opened the distribution chains, and several companies turned to foreign trade and investment to avoid