John Ganz on the Era When America Was Consumed by Panic With Corporate Japan

SPEAKER_2 (0:02)

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Joe Weisenthal (0:18)

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Joe Weisenthal.

Tracy Alloway (0:22)

And I'm Tracy Alloway.

Joe Weisenthal (0:23)

Tracy, here's something I've been thinking about with respect to China and all of the tensions with China, which is that it feels very elite, as in people in DC talk about it, people in, obviously in finance and business talk about it. It does not strike me that in the broad, and I could be wrong, my judgment could be off, but it does not strike me that in the broad public, that there are a lot of people, that it's top of mind for a lot of the public.

Tracy Alloway (0:52)

Weirdly, I think it was probably more top of mind in the past, in the hollowing out of America's manufacturing sector. I mean, that argument is kind of what has given rise to a lot of the populist politics that we see nowadays, right?

Joe Weisenthal (1:06)

Yeah, that's true. Right. During the China shock, there were a lot of people aware that their factories or the towns that depended on these factories were getting hollowed out, et cetera. But, you know, there's so much China, China, China. It's not in the media, right? It's not like it, or sorry, it's not in the movies. And I'm thinking of like Back to the Future 2, was it, where the main character's dad lost his job and they had this scene when he was getting laid off by his Japanese boss, et cetera.

Tracy Alloway (1:35)

Oh, you know what my favorite example of this is? Die Hard.

Joe Weisenthal (1:39)

Yeah, of course.

Tracy Alloway (1:40)

Best Christmas movie ever, but also the Nakatomi Corporation.

Joe Weisenthal (1:44)

Right. This was like a whole thing in pop culture. And it's just not at all. Maybe that has something to do with the fact that studios still want to, do they still distribute? Are American movies still getting wide distribution? Like for a while in China, like, because for a while, this was like a big story. Are they not going to talk about certain things?

Tracy Alloway (2:00)

This is partially why we have a bunch of superhero movies, by the way, because they're just because they play in international markets and they're not going to like offend anyone too much. Probably.

Joe Weisenthal (2:09)

It just doesn't feel to me for that, from like a pop culture standpoint, that the threats from China, whatever they are, are like getting that much play.

Tracy Alloway (2:19)

We need a good movie about China developing an AI chatbot that goes rogue and tries to take over the world. I think there was an AI plot in The Last Mission Impossible, or one of the recent ones. I haven't seen it. I don't know who developed the technology. Maybe it was China.

Joe Weisenthal (2:33)

It could have been, but anyway, like you said with Die Hard and there were several others. I think Michael Crichton had a book that talked about it. Certainly when I was younger, when I was like 11 or 12, and first became aware of the existence of the world around me, I remember I had a teacher who was really scoldy about people who drove Japanese cars, for example, and she talked about how-

Tracy Alloway (2:55)

It's anti-American.

Joe Weisenthal (2:56)

Yeah, how awful it was that there were people coming into our high school parking lot or whatever that drove Japanese cars.

Tracy Alloway (3:02)

Destroying the fabric of America by purchasing a Toyota.

Joe Weisenthal (3:05)

Yeah. Of course, now by Toyotas are made in the US, etc. No one talks like that with respect to Japan. But it is interesting thinking about similarities and differences between our relationship with China today and our relationship with Japan in the 80s, late 80s, etc. When it seemed like that was going to be the economy that really hollowed out what we got here.

Tracy Alloway (3:26)

There's a clear parallel here. There are also some key differences. I'm sure we'll get into all of that.

Joe Weisenthal (3:31)

A land of contradiction. Anyway, I'm very excited. We have a guest I've wanted to talk to for a long time. The perfect guest because he recently wrote about this. We're going to be speaking with John Ganz. He is an author and historian. He is publisher of The Unpopular Front Substack, which I am a paid subscriber to and a big fan. And he's also the author of the recent book, When the Clock Broke, Conmen Conspiracists and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s. Talk a little history. So John, thank you so much for coming on Odd Lots.