Misjudged Car Quota Decision, Nakasone Says
Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone said Friday that his government miscalculated when it announced a new, higher quota on exports of cars to the United States. At the same time, he said that Japan will make a strong effort to promote imports of foreign goods.
Nakasone told a group of foreign correspondents that the Japanese misread American attitudes when they decided to limit to 2.3 million the level of car exports to the United States in the fiscal year that began April 1.
“Our study of what the U.S. Congress, the White House and the American people at large were expecting was insufficient,” he told the correspondents at a luncheon in the prime minister’s residence.
‘Orderly Marketing’
Japan took the step, he said, “to ensure orderly marketing and to avoid a torrential downpour of (auto) exports which would have happened in April and May.”
He added: “We had absolutely no intention, by taking such a measure, to avoid our responsibility to open our markets and ensure . . . non-discrimination against foreign firms.”
If he had it to do over again, Nakasone said, Japan “probably would have been wiser” not to have announced a quota limit and “let things develop naturally.” However, he said, his government eventually would have been forced to impose restrictions on car exports after the expected surge of Japanese cars to the United States in April and May. Nakasone indicated that even if it had waited, Japan in the end would have imposed the same limit of 2.3 million.
The March 28 announcement of the 2.3-million-car limit, he said, “was a miscalculation in terms of our judgment (in making it), not in terms of the number of units.”
Figure Based on Study
He said that figure was arrived at on the basis of a study by the Ministry of International Trade and Industry showing that Japanese auto makers were planning to ship more than 2.7 million cars to the United States, an increase of about 850,000 over the previous year’s level.
He said American criticism that the increase of 450,000 cars, which will be allowed under the fiscal 1985 quotas, is too large or does not really represent restraint fails to take into consideration special factors.
He said the approved export figure is based in part on a wish to eliminate the premium that American buyers have had to pay for Japanese cars and also to allow American dealers to build up their inventories from an average 23 days’ supply to a normal level of 56 days.
He also mentioned the “ ‘captive imports’ that General Motors and Chrysler want to purchase from Japanese companies that have tieups with them.”
TV to Promote Imports
Referring to Japan’s effort to promote imports, Nakasone said that his government will enlist the aid of television and newspapers throughout the nation. And he said that along with this campaign the government will ask leading Japanese firms, “somewhat forcefully,” to buy more foreign goods.
He said there will be no direct punishment of firms that fail to buy more from abroad. But Keijiro Murata, the minister of international trade and industry, said at a separate press conference that firms will be required to submit periodic progress reports.
Murata said the campaign is without precedent anywhere. He said it is to be called a “Spiritual Movement Seeking Transformation of Thinking Toward Loving Use of Foreign Products by Each Enterprise and Citizen.”
A Shopping List
When Nakasone on Tuesday outlined a so-called action plan to increase imports, he called on every Japanese to buy an additional $100 worth of foreign products every year. On Friday, he handed the correspondents a list of “shopping suggestions.”
It included whiskey and wine, cigarettes, clothing, cosmetics, cheese, chocolate, jam, kitchen utensils and linen.
