No Dramatic Trade Moves Coming, Japan Warns U.S.

The Foreign Ministry warned the United States on Thursday not to expect any dramatic new market-opening moves when Japan announces Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone’s latest package of trade measures Tuesday.

Ministry spokesman Yoshio Hatano told foreign reporters that most of the measures, which are aimed at warding off rising anti-Japanese sentiment in Washington, have already been reported in the mass media.

“It will be an announcement of our best efforts to meet not only the expectations of the United States but of all of our trading partners,” Hatano said. “But you should not expect any surprise or dramatic announcement because newspapers already have reported most of the contents.”

Another ministry official, who asked not to be named, said, “We are not magicians who can fix everything in one day. What is important is (that the announcement will show) there is movement.”

The diplomat said that Tuesday’s package, the fifth from Nakasone, will contain promises to lower some tariffs, which he did not specify, but that it will not specify how much they will be cut. He also said Nakasone warned President Reagan in a meeting Jan. 2 in Los Angeles that removing barriers to imports of plywood--one of the major U.S.-Japan trade issues--would be “difficult.”

In polite Japanese, “difficult” usually means “impossible.”

This official said that Nakasone plans to issue an appeal to the Japanese people Tuesday to support a more open market but that this will be a “political” statement and that the prime minister “won’t be committing anything.” He characterized the declarations to be made Tuesday as “basically recommendations, on one hand, and a political statement by Nakasone, on the other.”

The comments came shortly before Nakasone called together Cabinet ministers in charge of economic affairs and the four principal executives of his ruling Liberal Democratic Party in an attempt to win support for more concessions to include in Tuesday’s package.

At the meeting, Agriculture and Forestry Minister Moriyoshi Sato repeated his opposition to lowering tariffs on plywood imports, complaining that “every time the issue of market-opening comes up, agricultural and forestry enterprises are forced to bear the impact.” He insisted that the Cabinet approve subsidies to forestry product businesses before deciding upon any tariff cuts.

However, Nakasone told Sato to draw up a plan to help domestic producers of plywood and other paper and wood products and to get it approved by the Finance Ministry so that tariffs can be lowered, Japanese newspapers reported.

The prime minister also instructed Posts and Telecommunications Minister Megumu Sato to eliminate impediments that have blocked the purchase of an American communications satellite. In Nakasone’s third trade package, announced a year ago, the government said it would “open the path” to purchases of foreign-made communications satellites. However, Japan has yet to make its first such purchase.

Nakasone also urged the postal minister to extract a promise from Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Corp. (NTT) to buy more American equipment this year than it did last year so that a commitment to increased telecommunications imports can be included in Tuesday’s package.

Although NTT was transformed Monday from a government monopoly into a technically private company, the government still holds 100% of its shares. The government eventually will sell two-thirds of the shares.

Other Nations Watching

The prime minister also said that import barriers should be eliminated as quickly as possible. “Not only the United States but the European Community and ASEAN (Assn. of Southeast Asian Nations) are watching what the results (of Tuesday’s announcement) will be,” Nakasone told the ministers and party executives.

Among them was Susumu Nikaido, the ruling party’s vice president, who on Tuesday openly criticized Nakasone for making too many concessions to the United States without securing ruling party approval. This time, however, Nikaido made no criticism.

National Interests Cited

Rather, he, too, appealed for concessions so that Nakasone will not be isolated in a sea of criticism when he attends the economic summit meeting of leaders of seven industrialized nations May 2-4 in Bonn. “Such a development would injure our national interests,” Nikaido said.

In his news conference for foreign correspondents, Hatano of the Foreign Ministry said some of the measures to be announced Tuesday will involve forest products--one of four sectors the Reagan Administration has singled out for special emphasis in its attempts to curtail a bilateral U.S. trade deficit that reached $36.9 billion last year. The Tuesday announcement, he added, also will summarize the measures Japan intends to take to meet American demands in three other key trade areas: electronics, telecommunications and pharmaceutical-medical equipment.

One major part of the planned Tuesday announcement, the other Foreign Ministry official said, will consist of recommendations drawn up by an advisory committee headed by former Foreign Minister Saburo Okita. The recommendations will be aimed at long-term goals for opening Japanese markets, he added.

Hatano said the package will also include a pledge by Japan to set a new target by the end of the year for increasing its foreign aid and to provide more aid in the form of grants and technical assistance to developing countries.

The new target will replace a program expiring this year under which Japan promised to double its foreign aid in the 1981-85 period compared with the aid it gave between 1976 and 1980. Budgeted amounts of aid have shown that Japan will fall slightly short of fulfilling that pledge.

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