1. No U.S.-based automotive manufacturers were victimized by this price-fixing scheme by Japan-based suppliers selling to Japan-based buyers in the United States. Should companies from different cultures that seem to accept such practices be punished so severely?
2. Discuss other recent examples of price fixing.
Tokyo-headquartered Bridgestone Corporation, the world's largest tire and rubber producer, recently agreed to plead guilty to price-fixing along with 25 other Japanese automotive suppliers. Twenty-eight executives were involved and pled guilty to the charges; some face prison sentences. Bridgestone and other suppliers were charged with conspiring to fix prices, rig bids, and allocate sales of parts sold to Japanese automakers Toyota, Isuzu, Nissan, Suzuki, and Fuji Heavy Industries in the United States during most of the 2000s. The company was slapped with a whopping $425 million criminal fine, more than double any of the other offenders' fines. In 2011, Bridgestone paid a $28 million fine for conspiring to fix prices with competitors in the marine hose industry but did not disclose that it was conducting the same activity in the automotive industry. The U.S. Justice Department didn't take kindly to that-hence the much larger fine this time. Collaboration among competitors is not unusual and is accepted in many Eastern cultures, such as Japan. Perhaps that is why the conspiracy continued for so many years. It involved Japanese suppliers selling to Japanese manufacturers, albeit in the United States.