Farm Talks With Japan a Failure, Officials Say

Two U.S. Cabinet-level officials complained bitterly Wednesday about Japan’s protectionist agricultural policies, saying that “we failed to accomplish anything” in talks with Japanese officials.

In a joint news conference, Agriculture Secretary Richard E. Lyng and Trade Representative Clayton K. Yeutter insisted that Japan must open its markets to farm goods to relieve pressures for protectionist legislation in Congress.

Lyng, although he de-emphasized his demand Tuesday that Japan lift its ban on rice imports, said: “I have been given no encouraging words and go home considerably disappointed.”

He added: “I have been unable to detect any kind of real understanding on the part of the Japanese leadership of the concerns that we have” for access to markets for rice, beef, citrus fruits, honey and 12 other farm products. Japan’s restrictions on the products are being debated in the forum of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), of which both nations are members.

Rejected Appeals

Lyng complained that the Japanese also had rejected appeals for reductions in tariffs “on a long list” of other agricultural goods. He implied that he would urge President Reagan to take up Japan’s protectionism on agricultural imports when he meets with Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone in Washington on May 30.

Neither Lyng nor Yeutter referred to concessions that Japan made Wednesday on chocolate tariffs and car telephones.

Despite his complaint about Japan’s ban on imports of rice, an issue that Agriculture Minister Mutsuki Kato equated with Japanese culture itself, Lyng denied that he had “zeroed in on rice.” He said he had made few demands on rice, asking only that Japan agree to debate its rice policy in a new round of multilateral GATT trade negotiations.

Lyng described his other requests as “the issues we cared the most about.” On those items, he said, “we failed to accomplish anything.”

He criticized what he called the “lack of understanding” by Japanese leaders “of the problems we have in the United States and the need for us to have some of these markets opened up in a country where we have a tremendous trade deficit and where we import almost everything that they wish to sell us.”

“There is no understanding of the inconsistency of that,” he added.

After the news conference, Lyng said in an interview that he had rejected an offer by Kato to raise Japan’s quotas on imports of beef and citrus fruits when a four-year bilateral trade agreement on those items expires next March 31.

“We don’t want to talk about it,” Lyng said. “We don’t want any more quotas.”

Reminded that the U.S. government had insisted in 1984 that quotas be abolished but wound up accepting an enlargement instead of an abolition of them, Lyng was asked if the same outcome was likely when negotiations on beef and citrus fruit begin later this year.

“No,” he said flatly. William Brock, then the U.S. trade representative, told the Japanese in 1984 that “this (current agreement) would be the last time” the United States would go along with the beef and citrus quotas.

In the news conference, Yeutter said he and Lyng had spent three hours Wednesday “listening to members of (Parliament) tell us over and over again why it would be difficult or impossible to further open Japan’s markets for agricultural products.”

Hearing such arguments from Japan’s politicians, he said, “one wonders how we in the Administration can be expected to continue to defend a free and open trade policy in the United States. It makes our job (defending free trade) that much more difficult.”

Yeutter said his talks here had focused on an attempt to convince Japan to expand domestic demand and imports, which the ruling Liberal Democratic Party promised April 7 that it would do.

“It requires more than simply the announcement of market-opening measures or the announcement of domestic-demand programs. It requires implementation,” the trade representative said. “Thus far, we have been disappointed in the implementation which has occurred in Japan.”

Lowering One Tariff

Earlier Wednesday, the Agricultural Ministry announced a decision to lower, effective April 1, 1988, Japan’s tariff on imports of chocolate products to respond to longstanding U.S. requests. Although U.S. officials had asked Japan to cut the tariff to 7%, the same duty the United States maintains, the ministry agreed to cut it to 10% from 20%.

Shunjiro Karasawa, head of the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications, told Yeutter in a meeting Wednesday that automobile telephones designed by Motorola would be licensed for use in both Hokkaido and Northwest Japan, in addition to the Osaka region.

U.S. officials had complained about the ministry’s failure to permit Motorola car phones to be used in the Tokyo area, where mobile phones designed by Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Corp. (NTT) have been licensed. The two systems are incompatible.

The potential market for NTT-designed car phones in the Tokyo area is estimated to be about twice as big as the market allocated to Motorola.