Friendship Plus

More than consolidation of their blossoming friendship will be required if the meeting Wednesday between President Reagan and Yasuhiro Nakasone, prime minister of Japan, is to serve the interests of the two nations.

“How can I get tough with a very good friend?” Reagan commented to reporters when questioned about growing pressure for remedies to the astronomical imbalance in trade between the two nations. Nakasone himself had accentuated the positive and suggested that he was not eager to spend the three hours of summitry on hard details.

Nakasone and Reagan have apparently developed a congenial relationship in their earlier meetings, and that is a good and useful thing to reaffirm as each commences a second term. The economies of the two nations are the most powerful in the world. The nations share a commitment to democracy, to freedom, to consolidation of the special relationship that is growing among the market-oriented industrial nations. Nakasone has proved a strong supporter of American policy positions on which past prime ministers had remained silent, including arms control. Indeed, some of the Tokyo briefings in anticipation of this meeting have seemed to place more emphasis on global strategic questions on the eve of the resumption of Soviet-American arms talks in Geneva than on the nuts and bolts and frictions of U.S.-Japan relations, and Japan has every right to insist on a role in preparing for the new negotiations.

But the bilateral problems cannot safely be set aside, because the close ties between the two nations are threatened by the deteriorating trade situation, by the fact that Japan sells the United States substantially more than it buys from the United States--an imbalance of $19 billion in 1983, growing to more than $30 billion in 1984 and forecast at $36 billion in 1985. Unless Japan offers remedies, particularly elimination of artificial barriers to imports, the growing deficit could very well trigger protectionist action in Congress that would be damaging to both nations.

It would be foolish to hold Japan entirely responsible for the trade deficit. Much of Japan’s surplus is appropriate reward for aggressive export marketing, with U.S. consumers the beneficiaries. And much is due to an overvalued dollar that encourages imports. Moves to restrict artificially the Japanese imports in the United States, as in the application of “voluntary” quotas on autos and steel, have punished American consumers more than Japanese producers. Nor will freer access to the Japanese market for U.S. goods balance the trade account. But it would help enormously, as Reagan emphasized last week in an interview with Yomiuri Shimbun. Japan has taken some significant actions already, broadening access for American agricultural products, reorganizing telecommunications so that U.S. and other foreign firms now can compete in the Japanese market. Nevertheless, unfair restrictions remain including tariffs on wood pulp and paper, obstacles to access by foreigners to capital markets, continued tight controls on food imports and barriers to open competition in the service sector, including shipping, financial and legal services.

Nakasone’s presence in Los Angeles will communicate to all the world his important role at the center of global diplomacy as well as the success that he has enjoyed in creating a special friendship with the American President. The meeting will make clear to all the shared commitment of Tokyo and Washington to an intimate and constructive relationship. That will not satisfy Americans, and it may not be enough for the Japanese, either, unless the two leaders also move into matters of substance that put at risk the harmony of the relationship between the two nations.

Only a few days ago Nakasone told American reporters in Tokyo that he is a “free trader.” The Los Angeles summit will be an appropriate place to practice that preachment.