Japan Weighs New Trade Rules, Sends Envoy to U.S.

Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone’s government sent a special envoy to Washington on Wednesday in an effort to counter rising anti-Japanese feeling in Congress and called top officials to a meeting today at which Nakasone will try to win domestic political backing for new “market-opening” measures.

The package of market-opening measures--the fifth that Nakasone has put together since he took office in November, 1982--will be announced Tuesday. Cabinet ministers in charge of economic affairs and key officials of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party will attend today’s meeting in an attempt to reach broad agreement on the main points.

The new collection of measures is expected to be the most important so far in its effects on U.S.-Japan relations in general and on Nakasone’s personal relationship with President Reagan--which both leaders have described as close.

However, reports here indicate that the new package, as it is now taking shape, will focus on sweeping declarations of future intentions, not the immediate problem of trade relations with the United States.

Despite repeated efforts by Nakasone to persuade his ruling party to reduce a 15% tariff on imports of American plywood and an 18% levy on imports of Southeast Asian plywood, the Agriculture and Forestry Ministry is reported to be still resisting any tariff cuts until it can finish work on a massive program of subsidies to prop up the weak domestic forestry products industry.

The ministry, which is seeking $1.2 billion in subsidies for the industry, is reported to be insisting that tariff cuts be held off until its domestic rescue effort is completed, which is expected to take five years.

Along with telecommunications, electronics and pharmaceuticals-medical equipment, forestry products have been singled out by the Reagan Administration for special emphasis in its attempts to get Japan to open up its markets.

Even a seven-point “action program” to promote imports, drawn up by an advisory committee headed by former Foreign Minister Saburo Okita, reportedly will be long on principles and short on specifics. A detailed, final plan will not be ready until November, the Yomiuri newspaper reported today. Criticism of Nakasone for attempting to hammer out concessions without consulting the leadership of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party came into the open Tuesday, apparently persuading Nakasone to call today’s meeting. He also announced plans to convene a meeting Monday of party elders--most of them former prime ministers--in an attempt to win support for trade-liberalizing measures.

With no further concessions on the controversial telecommunications issue likely this month, the package of market-opening measures to be made public Tuesday is expected to be the last major announcement Japan will make on its plans to open its markets before Nakasone goes to Bonn for a seven-nation economic summit May 2-4. He is expected to meet privately with Reagan there.

Foreign Minister Shintaro Abe, who is scheduled to visit Washington on April 13-14, ordered his deputy vice minister, Reishi Teshima, to leave today for Washington in an attempt to explain the efforts Japan is making to open its markets.

Abe ordered the action after the Senate Finance Committee approved a bill to impose tariffs and quotas on Japanese telecommunications equipment, automobiles and electronics products if Japan fails to take action to open its markets in 90 days after passage.

Both Abe and Takao Fujinami, chief Cabinet secretary, condemned the bill as “discriminating against Japan and a threat to the free trade system.”