article: A time when Madonna introduced legions of teenage girls to scrunchies and Jane Fonda made lycra and leg warmers cool. And if you were listening to cassette tapes - there's a good chance it was on the revolutionary Walkman - made by Japanese electronics firm Sony. But not everyone was a fan of this Asian influence. Books like "Japan as Number One" made the bestseller list, underscoring the antagonism many Americans felt about the then rising Asian superpower. And US President Ronald Reagan was slamming Japan for not opening its markets enough to US products. "We sell a car into Japan, and they do things to us that make it impossible to sell cars in Japan, and yet they sell cars into us," is the kind of rhetoric you might hear. Except that's not Reagan in 1982. It's Donald Trump in 2017. So are we rewinding back to the 1980s? It's a pertinent question to ask, especially as Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe visits the US to meet newly elected President for some leisurely golf and tough talking. Currency will be a talking point on the tee. Like in the 1980s, the US dollar is stronger than the Japanese yen - making Japanese goods cheaper for American consumers. Then, like now, the industries that were the main sticking points were the auto sector and agriculture. Cars, cows and citrus fruit led to a soaring US trade deficit with Japan, worth almost a fifth of the US's GDP at the time. Today the deficit between the two nations has halved, but when the two leaders meet over the next few days, it is these same three subjects that will likely be the focus of their talks. In the 1980s, Japanese car-makers built factories in the US to ward off criticism that they were unfairly dumping products in American markets. As a result, these days more than six million Japanese cars are sold in the US, with only around one million of them made in Japan. But apparently, that isn't enough. Toyota became a target of Mr Trump's trade rage recently for building a car plant in Mexico. In response, Toyota said it would invest $10bn in the US over the next five years. But analysts say the tough talk on cars won't end until Tokyo offers up some major concessions elsewhere, in particular on agriculture. To protect its farmers, Japan places an average 14% tariff on all agricultural goods imported into the country. By comparison, the US has a much lower tariff of 5%. If the Trans-Pacific Partnership had gone through, many of Japan's tariffs would have been eliminated. Tariffs on beef for example - the US's top agricultural export to Japan - would have been slashed by 74% within 16 years. Mr Trump effectively killed the TPP by removing the US from it. He will argue that if Tokyo wants to trade with the US and sell its cars to American consumers, it's going to have to cut tariffs even more aggressively. Mr Trump says that Japan is using monetary policy and
summary: It was the decade of The Empire Strikes Back and Michael Jackson's song Beat It.