Times-Yomiuri Poll : Most Americans Feel U.S. Is the Loser in Japan Trade
Most Americans believe that trade with Japan is doing more harm than good, that Japanese trade is partly or fully responsible for U.S. economic problems and that retaliatory measures against Japan should be adopted, according to a joint poll of Americans and Japanese by The Times and the Japanese daily Yomiuri Shimbun.
On the other hand, most Japanese strongly oppose U.S. trade sanctions against their nation, contending that Japan is at least as fair in trade practices as the United States.
Japanese are also more likely than Americans to believe that relations between the two nations have worsened in the last year and a half, with one in four believing that U.S.-Japan relations are unfriendly compared to only one in 10 Americans.
These and other results of the two-nation poll show that on trade issues, there is often wide disagreement between Americans and Japanese. Such differences may help explain why it has been so difficult for the two nations to resolve their trade disputes.
One somewhat surprising result of the poll, however, is that a substantial 40% of the Japanese surveyed believe that their nation is being fairly blamed for U.S. trade problems. That is almost as high as the number of Japanese who believe the country is being unfairly blamed.
On this issue, opinions of the Japanese public were remarkably close to those of Americans.
The attitudes of the public in both countries have assumed special importance this year amid mounting controversy over Japan’s trade surplus with the United States.
American trade negotiators have been concentrating with little success on expanding U.S. exports in four Japanese markets: telecommunications, electronics, forest products and pharmaceutical and medical supplies. Accordingly, the normally anti-protectionist Reagan Administration has said that the United States will impose penalties on Japanese imports unless Japan takes more significant steps toward opening its markets.
“The poll clearly shows that there is a perception gap between Japan and the United States,” said Taizo Watanabe, Japan’s consul general in Los Angeles. “That is one of the reasons why we have so much frustration on both sides.”
However, some of this perception gap is due to cultural differences, Watanabe said. Such differences, for example, may help explain why only 9% of Americans said the two nations are unfriendly while 22% of the Japanese held that belief.
“If confrontation comes to the surface in Japan, that means the two parties are not so friendly, . . . whereas in the U.S., confrontation is commonplace even among friends,” Watanabe said.
Japanese Pessimistic
“The American tends to be an optimist whereas the Japanese tends to be a pessimist,” said Frank B. Gibney, president of the Pacific Basin Institute, a Santa Barbara-based think tank. “That difference in attitude almost always influences polls like this.”
The simultaneous poll was conducted by The Times with telephone interviews in the United States and by the Yomiuri Shimbun with in-person interviews in Japan. The Times surveyed 1,967 Americans between Sept. 21 and Sept. 26., while the Yomiuri Shimbun, one of Japan’s largest newspapers, polled 2,257 Japanese on Sept. 21 and Sept. 22.
Times Poll Director I.A. Lewis said the sampling error for both U.S. and Japanese surveys was 3%, meaning that results could vary by three percentage points in either direction if all Americans and Japanese were polled.
Despite their belief that relations are friendly between the United States and Japan, many Americans believe that lingering memories of World War II still sour the public’s attitude toward the Japanese, the poll shows. Forty-four percent of those surveyed said resentment over the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor plays a very important part in how Americans feel about Japan.
Perceptions of Pearl Harbor-related resentment are highest among those polled in the Midwest and South and lowest in the West. Such a result could be explained by the importance in the Midwest and South of industries such as automobiles and textiles that have been hit hard by import competition.
Relatively Less Exposure
It also could be explained by the Midwest and South having relatively less exposure to Japanese people than the West. Nearly two-thirds of the Americans surveyed said they do not know a Japanese citizen or were unfamiliar with current events in Japan. Understandably, these respondents also were more likely to harbor negative feelings toward Japan.
“Such results can be expected because of a lack of awareness and contact between Japanese and American people,” said William G. Ouchi, professor of management at UCLA’s Graduate School of Management. “We haven’t been sending our finest college students to Japan the way we send them to England, for example.”
The poll shows that Americans find it easy to blame the Japanese for U.S. economic problems. Nearly two of every five Americans surveyed said the imbalance of trade with Japan is “very much” or completely responsible for economic conditions today, while 42% said it is somewhat responsible. Only 14% think it is not very responsible. By a 5-to-2 margin, Americans think trade with Japan does more harm than good.
Canadian Protectionism
However, Americans do not hold the same degree of negative attitudes toward Canada, even though that nation heavily protects its lumber and fishing industries from U.S. exports and ran a $20-billion trade surplus last year against the United States, second only to Japan’s $37-billion surplus.
When asked to choose which nation among Canada, Britain, Japan, West Germany, Italy or France that they had the most favorable impression of, 45% of the American respondents chose Canada, far ahead of the 14% who chose Britain, the 13% choosing Japan and 12% choosing West Germany.
“There seems to be a resentment that the Japanese have done so well,” said Gibney of the Pacific Basin Institute. “It’s hard to shake the ugly suspicion that there is a good bit if racism behind this,” he said, contending that while European nations have been “dumping” steel upon U.S. markets more flagrantly than the Japanese, “almost invariably Japan is fingered” as the bad guy.
Even with Americans’ strong support of retaliatory measures against the Japanese, many also believe that such restrictions still won’t be enough to wipe out the burgeoning U.S. trade deficit with the Asian nation, which is expected to reach $50 billion this year.
Japan Ascendancy Seen
The poll showed that most Americans think it will be a long time, if ever, before the trade imbalance is rectified, and nearly half of the Americans surveyed believe that Japan will equal or surpass the United States as an economic power by the year 2000.
The fact that Americans strongly support protectionism while also believing it won’t work is due in part to “a failure of political candor and intellectual leadership in this country,” contends Chalmers Johnson, a professor of East Asian Studies at UC Berkeley and a leading expert on U.S.-Japan relations. “Everybody knows protectionism isn’t going to work,” but American political leaders have failed to convince the public that other alternatives are better, he said.
The survey also provides more evidence of the difficulties American firms have had in selling products in Japan, a fact that has spurred Japanese Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone to urge Japanese consumers to buy more foreign goods.
Nearly two-thirds of the Japanese respondents said they have not bought a U.S. product in the last three years, while only 39% of the Americans said they have not bought a Japanese product in that same period.
Younger and more educated Japanese indicated that they are the most likely to buy U.S. products.
The poll shows that a “buy American” sentiment is still strong in the United States. One in four of the American respondents said they refuse to buy Japanese products at all.
Prefer U.S. TV Sets
By a 10-to-1 margin, American respondents said they prefer American-made products over Japanese-made products. American cars, televisions, computers and clothing were rated by Americans as superior to Japanese products, with only Japanese cameras getting the nod as superior to American models. (The Japanese were not asked to compare American products to their own.)
Japanese view their country’s trade policies in a far more favorable light than Americans do. While 63% of the Americans surveyed said that Japan protects its industries more than the United States, only 43% of the Japanese agreed.
And while 46% of the Americans said Japanese trade policies are less fair than American policies, only 18% of the Japanese agreed. More than half of the Japanese said their nation’s trade policies were as fair or more fair, with more educated Japanese and Japanese business executives more likely to believe that their nation is as fair as the United States.
“The Japanese don’t want to be made a scapegoat,” Consul General Watanabe said. They believe that the causes of the trade imbalance are not just because some Japanese markets are closed, “but also because of the high value of the dollar and the U.S. budget deficit. So whereas the Japanese believe they may have to do more to give greater access to foreign goods, they believe the United States should do more to clean up its own house.”
However, both the Japanese and American media and political leadership have been guilty of distorting the issues, UC Berkeley’s Johnson says. As a result, Americans tend to unjustifiably single out Japan as a culprit, while many Japanese fail to acknowledge that many of their markets are indeed relatively closed to American products, Johnson said.
“That creates a very real barrier to solving (U.S.-Japan) trade disputes,” he said.
Americans tend to favor retaliation while the Japanese tend to believe that enough has already been done to improve trade.
Voluntary Quotas
Most American respondents (58%) opposed President Reagan’s decision earlier this year to lift his demand for voluntary quotas on Japanese autos. The same percentage also called for the U.S. government to put more pressure on Japan to ease its trade barriers.
When given a choice of what general types of measures would be most effective in reducing the U.S. trade deficit with Japan, two in five of the American respondents preferred import restrictions on Japanese products, while 30% chose better access to Japanese markets and 22% picked voluntary quotas on Japanese products.
When asked their opinion on specific measures against the Japanese, the highest percentage of Americans (84%) favored negotiating an agreement to allow more American products into Japan, followed by requiring Japanese companies who sell in the United States to open factories here (77%), requiring Japanese products sold in the United States to contain a specified amount of American-made parts (67%), and a special tariff on Japanese products (50%).
By contrast, the Japanese opposed all but one of these measures, with only the requirement that Japanese build factories in the United States receiving majority approval.
HOW THE PUBLIC VIEWS U.S.-JAPAN RELATIONS
U.S JAPAN U.S.-Japan relations Better 17% 16% over last 1 1/2 years: Same 52 48 Worse 15 26 Japan and U.S. are: Friendly 80 65 Unfriendly 9 22 Purchased other Yes 57 32 nation’s product No 39 65 within past three years: Quality of Japan’s Higher 27 62 products compared Same 48 20 to U.S. products: Lower 18 5 Government protects Japan protects more 63 43 industries more: Same 11 23 U.S. protects more 16 16 Japanese trade Japanese more fair 3 25 policies: Equally fair 33 32 Japanese less fair 46 18 U.S. government Too much pressure 7 45 pressure Right amount 26 33 on Japan Not enough 58 9 Japan blamed for Unfairly 35 44 trade crisis: Not unfairly 44 40 Japan should open Favor 77 55 American factories: Oppose 19 27 Japanese products Favor 67 38 should contain Oppose 28 43 American parts: Special tariff on Favor 50 26 Japanese products Oppose 41 51 in U.S.: Japanese government Favor 84 39 allow more U.S. pro- Oppose 12 41 ducts into Japan:
Note: figures may not add up to 100% because “don’t know” responses are not included.
