Yeutter: Beef Pact With Japan Near

The government’s top trade negotiator left Friday for talks with Japanese officials, saying agreement appeared near on resolving a dispute over Japan’s beef import restrictions.

“We certainly have not yet reached any agreement, but I’m persuaded that the news is sufficiently encouraging to justify a trip,” U.S. Trade Representative Clayton K. Yeutter told reporters.

On Thursday, Yeutter said he would not take part in the Tokyo talks to pry open Japan’s closed markets unless progress warranted and that U.S. negotiators were “somewhat pessimistic” about any early solution to the row.

Yeutter refused to discuss details and said some issues “have not yet been fully resolved.”

Australian Beef

Yeutter’s office announced the trip before an international business breakfast and he went further when a visitor from Australia asked him if there was anything he could do to help ease her nation’s farm trade problems with the United States.

“Within the next 72 hours or so, I hope that our Australian friends will say good things about what we’ve been doing with regard to the beef situation and Japan,” Yeutter said. “So to our Aussie friends I would say this an opportunity to freeload--so enjoy it.”

He clarified later that he meant that opening the Japanese market would enable Australians to compete there with U.S. beef exporters.

“That’s assuming we reach an agreement,” he said. “That may be a healthy assumption at this point.”

The Agriculture Department says the Japanese market for high-quality or restaurant grade beef is $2 billion a year. But the United States gets only a small fraction of the sale because of an import quota of 58,400 tons of that grade imposed by the Tokyo government.

Import Restrictions

Japan’s overall quota for beef imports is 214,000 tons a year.

An agreement between the two nations under which the Japanese maintained the quota expired April 1 and for two months there was no resolution as the United States continued to insist on an end to the restriction.

The two countries also are at loggerheads over Japanese import restrictions on citrus products.

American efforts to have the matter settled by a panel in Geneva under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade were vetoed by Japan.

On Capitol Hill, cattle-state senators said they assumed Yeutter’s trip meant that an agreement was imminent.