THE SUMMIT IN TOKYO : Democrats Back President on Two-Way Trade

A Democratic spokesman agreed with President Reagan on Saturday that free trade is a two-way proposition and urged the President to make clear at the Tokyo economic summit that the $50-billion deficit anticipated this year in trade with Japan is “totally unacceptable.”

Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), responding for his party to Reagan’s weekly radio talk, which originated this week from Tokyo, called on the Republican President to tell Japanese Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone that “Americans favor free trade, but we also expect a two-way trade” and want to see talk about opening of Japanese markets replaced by action.

Reagan said in his broadcast that he intends to discuss protectionist pressures at the summit conference “to make certain that free trade is not a one-way proposition, that markets are open in all other countries and that other governments do not unfairly subsidize their exports.”

‘Stagnation and Decline’

“While free trade means change and progress,” Reagan said, “protectionism invariably leads to stagnation and decline.”

Bingaman urged the President to “make it clear that, while we are not a protectionist nation, we will do what’s necessary to maintain the sources of production, innovation and growth which have made this country great.”

Bingaman said Reagan should follow up decisions taken at the summit meeting with support for modernization of trade laws. He asked steps to help U.S. firms compete abroad and recommended support for increased education funding to develop a more productive work force and for scientific research to “help us secure our economic future.”

Protesting that “the challenge of meeting foreign economic competition has been ignored too long,” Bingaman said the absence from the U.S. delegation to the Tokyo meeting of Clayton K. Yeutter, the U.S. trade representative, is a “clear sign” that Reagan “gives this problem too low a priority on our national agenda.” Although former President Jimmy Carter included the trade representative in delegations he took to economic summits, Reagan never has.

Meeting in Indonesia

Reagan devoted much of his Saturday talk to a summary of his meeting in Indonesia with the foreign ministers of the six-nation Assn. of Southeast Asian Nations and reported that an issue of concern to all participants was “the growing pressure for protectionism to shut world markets,” even though “unfettered commerce has been a mighty force for growth and prosperity.”

“Over the last two decades, ASEAN countries committed to free trade and open markets have had some of the highest growth rates in the world,” Reagan said.