Japan Refuses to Budge on Trade Issues--Yeutter
U.S. Trade Representative Clayton K. Yeutter charged today that Japan is refusing to budge on trade disputes and warned that the prospect of retaliation by Congress is still “very real.”
Yeutter and Agriculture Secretary Richard E. Lyng, appearing at a joint news conference during their simultaneous trips to Japan, said their talks this week with Japanese officials left them with “frustration” and “disappointment.”
The two were the highest-ranking U.S. officials to visit since the Reagan Administration last week invoked trade sanctions against Japan in a computer chip dispute, the two nations’ worst postwar trade conflict.
Yeutter and Lyng said Japanese leaders showed no progress on measures to ease the U.S. trade deficit with Japan--$59 billion last year--including opening Japan’s markets and stimulating its domestic economy to boost imports.
Cites Japanese Litany
Yeutter expressed particular dismay about a meeting today with Japanese lawmakers, who he said recited a litany of “why it is difficult or impossible” to open Japanese markets further to foreign goods.
“One wonders how we in the Administration can be expected to continue to defend a free and open trade policy in the United States when we receive that kind of response,” Yeutter said. “We will do so, but it makes our job that much more difficult.”
He warned that the continued reluctance by Japan to take firm action could tie the hands of the Reagan Administration in its effort to keep outrage in Congress from boiling over into stiff protectionist legislation.
“The threat of protectionist legislation is still a very real one,” Yeutter said.
Tough Trade Bill Seen
After being criticized for inaction, the Administration was seen as having won back some of its credibility in deflecting congressional Japan-bashers through last Friday’s trade sanctions. But Yeutter said the battle is far from over.
The House is expected to produce a tough trade bill--possibly next week while Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone is in Washington on a fence-mending mission--and is likely to include a measure mandating retaliation against nations that run perennial trade surpluses with the United States.
But in talks with Japan’s trade minister and other officials, Yeutter was reported to have received only vague promises on economic stimulation and key individual issues.
Lyng was rebuffed on demands that Japan negotiate an end to its ban on imported rice and drop restrictions on other farm imports, including beef and oranges. He said he will “go home considerably disappointed.”
