P.M. BRIEFING : No Talks Under Duress, Japan Says
Hikaru Matsunaga, Japan’s new minister of trade and industry, said today that Tokyo will not discuss any trade problems under the threat of U.S. retaliation.
In another sign of the new government’s hard-line approach, the new agriculture minister said Japan will continue to be completely self-reliant in rice to protect its farmers.
Matsunaga, appointed head of the International Trade and Industry Ministry on Wednesday by Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu, said at his first news conference as minister that Japan will deal positively with its structural trade problems in talks with the United States scheduled for early September.
He said that some structural problems cannot be solved overnight and that Japan wants the United States to understand this. These problems include Japan’s high savings rate and the special relationships among its companies, he said.
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