U.S. Not Seeking Export Restraints, Japanese Leaders Told : Yeutter Says Market Access Vital
Clayton Yeutter, the new U.S. trade representative, urged Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone on Tuesday not to limit Japan’s exports to the United States but warned that a $50-billion American trade deficit with Japan this year “cannot be sustained.”
“Export restraint is no substitute for market access,” he declared in a speech at the Foreign Correspondents Club here. “I do not want to see fewer Japanese exports to the United States. I want to see more U.S. exports to Japan.”
Yeutter, in his first visit to Japan since assuming his post at the end of June, urged Nakasone during a one-hour meeting earlier in the day to encourage the Japanese purchase of U.S. communications satellites, telecommunications equipment and aircraft.
Yeutter, former president of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange who succeeded William E. Brock III in the trade post, had no answer when a reporter asked him how the American trade deficit with Japan could be reduced if Japan does not restrain its exports.
The Japanese trade surplus with the United States grew by $15 billion in 1984 and is again expanding by about that amount this year.
To reduce the deficit, as Yeutter proposed, the United States would have to increase its exports to Japan by more than $15 billion in one year. The trade representative made no attempt to explain how the United States could accomplish that.
“My first priority,” he said, “is market access. Once we’ve gained that, we’re prepared to take our chances on what the deficit will be.”
24.3% Increase
He reiterated, however, that this year’s expected $50-billion deficit is not “politically tolerable.”
Asked whether the United States is willing to have Japan’s auto makers export passenger cars free of all restraints, he would say only, “That’s a decision that must be made in Japan.”
The Japanese government this year is allowing auto makers here to increase shipments to the United States to 2.3 million cars, a 24.3% increase from last year’s 1.85 million.
Referring to Nakasone’s latest “market-opening package,” his fifth since becoming prime minister in November, 1982, Yeutter said: “Announcements are not enough. . . . Results are the ultimate measure of success and thus far the results are modest, at best.”
The three-year “action program” that Nakasone announced July 30, Yeutter said, leaves the United States and Japan “a long, long way from the ultimate objective of dealing satisfactorily and appropriately with all of the trade problems that presently separate us.”
Yeutter said he “had just been told” by a Japanese businessman--whom he did not identify-- that “Japan doesn’t need anything America produces.”
“I hope that’s not correct,” Yeutter said.
He urged the Japanese business community to become “vigorous buyers” of U.S. goods, saying that “unless there is an enthusiastic, committed effort by Japanese business (to import), all of these (Japanese government market-opening programs) will fail.”
In other meetings with Japanese officials, Yeutter urged Japan to buy more soda ash from the United States and to cut its tariffs on imported aluminum, paper products and optical fibers. He also asked Japan to use American ships to transport Japanese cars to the United States and to procure more auto parts from American firms.
