Publications
Publications
- 2021
- HBS Working Paper Series
Trade and the Single Car Market: The EC-Japan Elements of Consensus, 1985–1999
By: Grace Ballor
Abstract
In 1991, in the midst of the program to create a liberal Single European Market and in the context of a new Joint Declaration for cooperation with Japan, the European Commission brokered a private deal to restrict Japanese imports into the European Community for nearly a decade (1993–1999). These “Elements of Consensus” developed from the collective efforts of European automakers and their business interest associations—the CCMC and ACEA—to shape the Community’s Common Commercial Policy and insulate themselves from the threat of Japanese competition (1985–1991). Drawing evidence from archival documents, this article reconstructs how European automakers lobbied the Commission for protections and how the Commission tried to use these protections as a means for regional market liberalization. As a result, it contributes new dimensions to scholarship on the influence of corporations in politics in general and the relationship between business and European integration in particular.
Keywords
Market; Protectionism; Liberalization; Trade; Markets; International Relations; Auto Industry; Europe; European Union; Japan
Citation
Ballor, Grace. "Trade and the Single Car Market: The EC-Japan Elements of Consensus, 1985–1999." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 21-145, June 2021.