Can’t Even Get License to Buy Table Tennis Paddles : U.S. Trade Barriers Are Highest in World, Soviet Official Complains

A senior Soviet official charges that the United States raises higher trade barriers than any other nation in the world.

The allegation was made last week at a briefing for reporters by Nikolai Smelyakov, the Soviet Union’s deputy foreign trade minister.

“It is very difficult to do business with the United States,” Smelyakov said. “We want to work with American firms, but we’re not sure even if we sign a contract that we will get deliveries.”

He said the Soviet Union once bought metal-cutting equipment from an American firm “in considerable numbers” until a signed delivery contract was not fulfilled.

Moscow bought tractors and pipe-laying equipment from another U.S. firm for more than 50 years until American export licenses for this equipment were no longer issued, he added.

Asked about protectionist measures, Smelyakov replied: “There are such measures. We cannot supply many kinds of goods to the United States, for example. The United States is the single biggest prohibitor, as it were.”

Doesn’t Expect Progress

Smelyakov also expressed doubt that a visit to Moscow next month by Commerce Secretary Malcolm Baldrige for a meeting of a Soviet-American trade commission would accomplish much.

Asked what he thought the meeting would produce, he replied: “Good words, in any case.”

However, he linked trade to the condition of U.S.-Soviet relations, saying: “If the political situation changes, many possibilities could be opened up.” But he complained that a 14-nation coordinating committee that reviews export licenses to the Soviet Union is acting so irrationally that it banned the sale of table tennis paddles.

“If we can’t buy table tennis paddles, then what kind of trade can we have?” he asked.

While the Soviet Union would like to receive most-favored-nation status under U.S. law, he said, it can live without it.

Big Trade Imbalance

New Soviet figures for 1984 show that its exports to the United States were only $347 million, while its U.S. imports--swollen by unusually heavy grain purchases--rose to $3.5 billion.

Smelyakov was much more optimistic about trade prospects with Canada, which bought only $18 million worth of Soviet goods last year.

“We’re planning much wider trade relations with Canada,” he said, predicting a rise in Soviet exports of tractors, farm equipment and industrial machinery to that country.

He hinted that the Soviet Union might turn to the United States or other Western countries to buy a “massive” number of personal computers for use in a new course to be taught in each of the Soviet Union’s 60,000 high schools.

“I do not exclude that possibility,” Smelyakov said, adding that plans are not yet firm for computer acquisition.