P.M. BRIEFING : U.S. Ambassador Urges Japanese Trade System Reform, Chides Press

U.S. Ambassador Michael Armacost called today for further reform of Japan’s import and distribution systems and chided the press for using phrases denoting confrontation to describe U.S.-Japan trade relations.

“You need to take bolder steps to ensure that where there are barriers to imported products, they be removed,” Armacost said in a speech to the Japan National Press Club.

“Impatience with those barriers grows with your economic success,” he said. “The answer is not regulated trade, but for you to deregulate areas of the economy in which, if you’ll allow me as a foreigner to say, your citizens enjoy the fruits of your labor in your own market.”

He singled out Japan’s complex distribution system as a barrier to international trade that should be addressed.

Armacost, 52, was previously undersecretary of state for political affairs and before that ambassador to the Philippines.

He said that press reports, to some extent American but primarily Japanese, perpetuate trade problems with provocative language.

“One rarely sees U.S.-Japan trade described without the emphasis being placed almost exclusively upon masatsu (friction),” he said. “We’re always hearing about the ‘cherry war,’ the ‘beef and oranges war,’ the ‘landing of foreign capital.’ ”

He urged the Japanese press not to portray the U.S. economy as being in decline.

“Don’t worry about us; don’t patronize us,” he said, calling the American economy “robust.”