I'll try one more time, then I give up. Japan and Germany had three choices:
1) Stimulate demand in their own economies, enabling US exports to grow
2) Go along with the Plaza Accord, and suffer a bit with the exchange rates.
3) Oppose the Plaza Accord, and face unilateral American devaluation of the USD (do you doubt the US ability to do this unilaterally?) along with protective tariffs to protect its manufacturers.
You tell me: if you were Japan or Germany, which one would you choose? It's hard for me to believe this is a difficult choice, but perhaps you see something that I'm not seeing. I sense you might not know this, so let me point it out explicitly (and perhaps this will clarify the situation for others as well). Here was Japan's real GDP growth in the 1980s:
1980: 3.2%
1981: 4.2%
1982: 3.4%
1983: 3.1%
1984: 4.5%
1985: 6.3%
1986: 2.8%
1987: 4.1%
1988: 7.1%
1989: 5.4%
And here was Germany's:
1980: 1.3%
1981: 0.1%
1982: -0.8%
1983: 1.6%
1984: 2.8%
1985: 2.2%
1986: 2.4%
1987: 1.5%
1988: 3.7%
1989: 3.9%
I keep hearing from users here about how Plaza destroyed the Japanese economy. That asserting is not evident in the numbers. The real estate bubble was not inevitable, and could have been avoided with better monetary policy (just like the US real estate bubble), but to put Japan's lost decades entirely on the shoulders of Plaza is misguided. It's clear that Plaza didn't destroy the German economy either. In fact, in
this fascinating account of the lead up to the Plaza Accords and the after-effects, it's clear that Germany essentially single-handedly was responsible for the USD devaluation, doing far more than either the US or Japan (pp. 12-13 of the pdf, pp. 303-304 of the text in the upper left corner). And to complete the picture, the USD had already depreciated as much in the six months leading up to Plaza as it did in the six months following Plaza, so the trend was already in place. Plaza simply accelerated it.
In light of that, is it easier for you to accept that Japan could make a decision, as a sovereign nation, that its best course of action to assist a major trading partner without triggering a trade war, would be choice #2? If not, then please continue believing that Japan is an American colony, or science experiment, or amusement park.
China, on the other hand, managed the appreciation well, whereas Japan did not. I don't see how that contradicts the case that China accommodated the US in this regard, as it was the least bad option from China's perspective.
Regarding the issue of forcing other countries to put America's interest over their own, it is precisely that framework of thinking that I am trying to refute. These actions served the interests of both nations. Not every nation sees the world through a zero-sum lens in the same way that several Chinese users here do. Not even the CCP sees the world through that lens, at least when it comes to the United States.
In short, I don't assume other nations should prioritize the US over their own interests. Please, let's move on from that framework, since it is false.