In 1990, the president of the Semiconductor Industry Association urged Congress not to abandon his membership in its trade dispute with Japan. In an impassioned plea before a receptive audience, this influential witness testified that there was a difference between semiconductor chips and potato chips that mattered for the nation as a whole. His plea did not fall on deaf ears. Few on Capitol Hill thought of the semiconductor rivalry as just another trade dispute. These chips, after all, are the underpinnings of the information age, the kind of high-technology industry in which governments might invest to leverage their economic growth and competitiveness. Perhaps not surprisingly, Washington reaffirmed its commitment to “level the playing field” in chips by funding U.S. firms and by seeking to renew the Semiconductor Trade Agreement.

At about the same time, the American Electronics Association's vice-president argued before Congress that his membership, too, needed help if it was to compete with Japan in high-definition television (HDTV). Like those who had pleaded the case for government intervention on behalf of the semiconductor industry, proponents of HDTV explained that there were too many key technologies at stake to let U.S. firms fend for themselves. One sympathetic lawmaker put the matter more succinctly than most, claiming that the fight over HDTV had “become a symbol of America's willingness to compete in a tough new world in which foreign competitors target every aspect of modern industrial technology.”