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John Ganz on the Era When America Was Consumed by Panic With Corporate Japan - Odd Lots
Oct 11, 2025 Odd Lots
These days, there's a non-stop drumbeat of concern that China and its dominant companies will eat America's economic lunch, so to speak. Of course, this isn't the first time in our history that there were worries about a rising Asian industrial power. In the 1980s and early 1990s, there was a lot of concern about the rise of corporate Japan. And that fear was seen all over movies and pop culture, from Die Hard to the Michael Crichton novel Rising Sun. This time there is one big difference: Chinese dominance doesn't permeate our pop culture in the same way. And furthermore, the US has long had military bases in Japan, so that dimension was quite different, too. To understand this period further, we talk to John Ganz, who writes the Unpopular Front newsletter, and is the author of the recent book, When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s. We discuss how this fear came about and disappeared, but also how it still influences American politics to this day.
These days, there's a non-stop drumbeat of concern that China and its dominant companies will eat America's economic lunch, so to speak. Of course, this isn't the first time in our history that there were worries about a rising Asian industrial power. In the 1980s and early 1990s, there was a lot of concern about the rise of corporate Japan. And that fear was seen all over movies and pop culture, from Die Hard to the Michael Crichton novel Rising Sun. This time there is one big difference: Chinese dominance doesn't permeate our pop culture in the same way. And furthermore, the US has long had military bases in Japan, so that dimension was quite different, too. To understand this period further, we talk to John Ganz, who writes the Unpopular Front newsletter, and is the author of the recent book, When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s. We discuss how this fear came about and disappeared, but also how it still influences American politics to this day.
Link to transcript