The Nation - News from Sept. 23, 1987

U.S. semiconductor makers told the Reagan Administration in a letter that Japan has not complied with a year-old pact on computer chip trade, despite the leveling of U.S. sanctions last spring. The Semiconductor Industry Assn. said U.S. companies’ share of the Japanese market “is actually below the level which existed before the agreement was signed.” The government of Japan has denied repeatedly that it has violated the pact, which called for Japan to halt the “dumping”, or deliberate underpricing, of computer chips in U.S. and other markets, and to give U.S. companies more access to lucrative Japanese markets. Computer chips, or semiconductors, are the tiny electrical circuits that are the building blocks of computers and other sophisticated modern electronic circuits.