Whay made Japan sign the Plaza Accord in 1985?

Question:

title says it all

Answer:

In short, The Japanese signed knowing that if the US started closing the door to Japan through quotas or tariffs, other countries could do so also and Japan would face a major recession or depression since the economy was essentially export driven. But the US didn't want a trade war, and was trying to fix the worsening trade imbalance without setting up hundreds of tariffs against Japanese goods. Their solution was to make Japanese goods more expensive by weakening the value of the dollar versus the yen. And with American goods becoming cheaper, the idea was more Japanese would buy US goods.

That accord turned out to be pretty much a failure for the US, since cheaper imports into Japan only fattened up the bottom lines of the countless redundant middlemen in the wildly complicated Japanese distribution system - in the end, Japanese consumer prices barely budged. Plus, many American companies were completely ignorant of Japanese consumer needs - the failure of selling a significantly higher number of US cars is one example. Many US cars were too big for Japanese roads, and US engines all fall within the highest tax bracket for owning cars in Japan, pretty much having appeal only to the rich. But the rich would rather have a beemer or benz, like everywhere else. The only benefit really went to the yakuza buying oversized caddies.