There would be changes, of course. The “social dumping” of cheap exports that had enabled prewar Japan to penetrate and disrupt foreign markets would be eliminated. This, in fact, had always been one goal of the occupation’s reformist economic policies, including its land and labor reforms. Improving the lives of the working population by promoting higher wages, higher incomes, and a more equitable distribution of wealth, the argument went, would create a larger domestic market and inhibit the dumping of underpriced goods abroad.
