Japan Reported as Resisting U.S. Trade Pressure

Japan is leaning against most of the demands being made by the United States on opening up Japan to more imports, including a request that it purchase American-made satellites, a major newspaper reported Tuesday.

Asked for comment, a Foreign Ministry spokesman would say only that the government was still considering the U.S. demands and had not yet decided on its position.

Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone, meanwhile, called on his nation to work out a new market-opening policy “with determination,” the Japanese news agency Kyodo reported.

The Tokyo Shimbun newspaper reported in its morning edition that the ministries of Foreign Affairs; International Trade and Industry; Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries; Post and Telecommunications, and Health and Welfare had adopted a negative posture to the U.S. demands “at present.”

The paper said Japan was taking a “positive” stance on the purchase of American telecommunications products by Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Public Corp., the telecommunicationsmonopoly, and on the acceptance of results from foreign laboratories that show foreign-made medical equipment meets Japanese standards.

But it said the ministries wanted to reject many of the 32 other demands reportedly made by the United States to reduce the U.S. trade deficit with Japan, which hit $33 billion last year.

The daily suggested that Japan also would reject the U.S. call for tariff reductions on more than 140 items, including paper, aluminum, lumber products and chocolate.

Also on the list of demands was the Japanese purchase of U.S. satellites, long a topic of dispute. “The government at present has no plans to purchase satellites,” the newspaper said.

In a meeting with Nakasone in Los Angeles on Jan. 2, President Reagan specifically mentioned satellites, timber, electronics, and pharmaceuticals and medical equipment as areas in which U.S. products are competitive and should be able to make greater inroads in the Japanese market.

Nakasone’s remarks, at a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday, suggested Japan must reach a market-opening policy before U.S. congressional deliberations on the bilateral trade imbalance are held in February.

The Shimbun article said the Japanese government was upset by what it sees as “unfair” sanctions imposed on Japanese whaling by the United States.

The United States said earlier that if Japan retracted its objections to the International Whaling Commission’s whale-catch quota by April, the American side would not take retaliatory actions even if Japan continued to whale for two more seasons.