U.S. Patience With Japan Frayed, He Warns : Lyng to Set No Rice Trade Deadline
Agriculture Secretary Richard E. Lyng said Tuesday that he will not set a deadline for Japan to lift its ban on rice imports but warned that Congress is running out of patience.
Lyng, whose appeal Monday for an opening of the rice market was rebuffed by Japan’s agriculture minister, Mutsuki Kato, said he did not want to “sound threatening” because he does not “think that will stimulate the kind of discussions we should have.
“It is our hope that we do not run out of time, that we can solve these things in a peaceful and constructive way. . . . (But) patience is beginning to be very much frayed in Washington, and I can’t emphasize that enough.”
‘Radically Changed’
During a lunch at the Japan National Press Club, Lyng said he believes that Japanese officials do “not fully understand the difference (in protectionist sentiment in Congress) now, as it might have been six months ago, a year ago, or two years ago. It is a radically changed situation, and is very explosive.
“We are perhaps on the verge of some very harsh, mandatory, retaliatory laws which would (cause) very serious problems for trade relationships between the United States and other countries, especially Japan,” he said.
Lyng said Kato told him that debate on agricultural issues in a new round of multilateral trade negotiations under the aegis of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade should be “a slow crop and a long harvest.” That statement, Lyng said, prompted him to ask for bilateral discussions on rice “because we don’t want to wait forever.”
Most Sensitive Issue
With its huge trade surplus, he said, Japan cannot afford to retain total protection for any item, not even rice, which, for Japan is the most sensitive trade issue. On Monday, Kato linked it to the very preservation of Japan’s national culture.
However, Lyng said, “We in the United States must do something because of the huge $60-billion trade deficit we are running with Japan. . . . If we can’t do it by expanding exports, we are going to be forced to do it by trimming imports.”
Kato, speaking to Japanese newsmen Tuesday, said he thought that the Reagan Administration had been prompted to seek bilateral negotiations on the rice issue by bills submitted in Congress designed to force Japan to open its rice market. He also predicted that pressures would mount.
On Lyng’s request for bilateral rice talks, Kato said such talks are “out of the question today.” Asked about the future, he refused to comment.
Next Step Unknown
Lyng said he did not know what action U.S. Trade Representative Clayton K. Yeutter or the U.S. Rice Millers Assn. would take as a result of Japan’s refusal to open even a part of its market to rice imports. Last fall, when the United States turned down an appeal from the millers to study retaliatory actions against Japan’s “unfair” trade practices in rice, Yeutter declared that the appeal would be reconsidered this summer if Japan refuses to change its policy on rice imports.
The agriculture secretary noted that “no action has been taken.”
Lyng said he recognizes that the Japanese are apprehensive about “food security.” But he said fears that an opening of the rice market would wipe out Japanese farmers, who grow rice at 5.8 times the cost of production in the United States, are unfounded.
“It never occured to us that we or the world would take over all of the Japanese rice production,” Lyng said. “That would be impossible. Japan must continue to be a major producer of its own rice. We do not want to threaten the Japanese rice farmers or the Japanese consumers. We think there should be some access to the rice market--and that is all we have said. But we have found an unwillingness to talk about that.
“We want to see the average Japanese be given the same opportunity, the same choice, in the purchase of U.S. products that the U.S. consumer now has in buying Japanese products.”
Yeutter, meanwhile, turned down another appeal for withdrawal of punitive tariffs on Japanese electronics goods that President Reagan imposed Friday in retaliation for Japan’s alleged failure to uphold an agreement on semiconductor trade. This time, the appeal came from Hajime Tamura, minister of international trade and industry.
Tamura told Yeutter that the Japanese government is studying the possible allocation of funds in a supplementary budget to be passed this fall for procurement by government agencies of an unspecified number of American super-computers.
He admitted for the first time that Japanese manufacturers had exceeded reasonable limits in discounting sales of computers and super-computers to universities. The ministry will study sales practices in the United States and draw guidelines for future computer sales to Japanese academic institutions, he said.
Tamura’s statement marked a radical change from the Japanese attitude in January. Three months ago, U.S. negotiators said the two sides had found “no common ground” concerning U.S. complaints that American super-computers were being systematically excluded from procurement by government agencies and universities here.
