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Reaction Among Domestic Auto Makers Mixed : U.S. Welcomes News Japan to End Car Quotas

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Times Staff Writer

Reagan Administration trade officials said Friday that they would welcome a move by the Japanese government to abandon its self-imposed restraints on auto exports to the United States, but reports that the Japanese quota program will end in March received mixed reactions from auto makers.

Earlier this week, Japanese government and industry officials predicted that the “voluntary” restraints on auto shipments to the United States would be lifted when the fifth year of quotas ends next March. On Wednesday, Toyota Chairman Eji Toyoda told The Times that Toyota was basing its production and marketing plans for 1986 on the assumption that the quotas would be lifted.

Then, on Thursday, published reports in Japan said that a top Japanese trade official had also predicted that the restraint program would not be extended.

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Although General Motors officials dismissed the Japanese statements as “trial balloons,” the Reagan Administration was openly pleased with the news. The Administration views the continuation of auto quotas as a roadblock to the further opening of the Japanese market to American goods.

“Our view is the same as last year--that it would be fine for the Japanese to drop them (quotas),” said Desiree Tucker, spokeswoman for the U.S. trade representative’s office in Washington.

She added, however, that the Administration has not received any official word from the Japanese about the issue. “I think it is still early for them to make a final decision,” Tucker said.

Officials at Ford, the only Big Three auto maker that doesn’t import Japanese cars on its own, were upset by the reports.

“It is hard to believe,” Ford said in a prepared statement. “We hope they understand the serious consequences an action like that would have. With the Japanese building plants in this country, they should be shipping fewer cars from Japan now, not more.

“With lower demand for new cars expected next year, it is almost incredible that Japan would consider increasing the flood of Japanese cars into this country.”

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GM and Chrysler, which both import and sell cars built by Japanese affiliates, appear to have mixed feelings about the quota program. Although imports hurt the sales of their domestic cars, neither company has been able to import as many small Japanese cars as they have wanted to in recent years.

Throughout the five-year quota program, anonymous Japanese trade officials have often floated trial balloons concerning the government’s plans for the next year of quotas, apparently to determine how such options are received in the United States. Such statements usually occur months before the government actually must make a decision and thus are often off target. But they still provide evidence of the government’s thinking on the issue, and the decision to drop restraints could become final unless a firestorm of protest develops in Congress or elsewhere.

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