U.S. Envoy Walks Tightrope in Tokyo : Pacific Rim: Although the Administration is undecided on trade policy, Michael Armacost must persuade Japan that Americans mean business.

He towers over his hosts at an undiplomatic 6 feet, 4 inches, but he speaks with a soothing, resonant voice. During the past eight months, Michael H. Armacost, the 23rd U.S. ambassador to Tokyo, has used this voice both to challenge and reassure the Japanese with skilled precision at a time when bilateral relations seem headed for the brink.

Armacost’s job is to walk an impossible tightrope. He must act as point man in Tokyo for an Administration that cannot make up its mind on trade policy and serve a President who is juggling an ideology of laissez-faire economic orthodoxy with efforts to appease a Congress that is frustrated--and potentially protectionist--on trade.

He must try to tone down the hyperbole surrounding the “trade war” over America’s so-far-incurable $50-billion trade deficit with Japan. At the same time, he must persuade Japan Inc. that the United States really means business this time and that economic frictions will not melt away as they have in the past unless Japan implements some fundamental changes.

But the most difficult task for this career diplomat may be to follow the act of the popular Mike Mansfield, 86, the former Senate majority leader who retired as Tokyo ambassador a year ago after more than a decade of serving as the grandfatherly patron saint of U.S.-Japan relations.

Mansfield left the scene about the same time as the late Emperor Hirohito, and perhaps with nearly as much symbolism. It was the end of an era in a bilateral relationship that Mansfield liked to invoke as the most important in the world. During Mansfield’s tenure, economic problems were routinely overshadowed by the security alliance that the two countries have nurtured since the end of World War II.

“By the time I got out here, it was a much different political climate,” Armacost, 52, said in an interview recently.

Now, the trade imbalance is at the core of the relationship, especially because major macroeconomic remedies--such as nearly doubling the value of the yen against the dollar from its 1985 level--failed to sufficiently stem the flow of Japanese exports and draw American imports into Japan.

“The surge of Japanese exports into the U.S. heartland has left a legacy of protectionism,” Armacost said. “The American Congress is different. . . . The business community’s attitude on trade issues has changed,” and there is a “more critical intellectual environment” after the recent publication of several books and articles on Japan by so-called revisionist thinkers.

“There is also a recession of concern about Cold War issues, and that’s different,” Armacost said. “One result has been that those voices who in the past argued we should subordinate concerns about trade to a larger strategic interest, those voices have been muted.”

Armacost quickly distinguished himself on arriving in Tokyo last May with a mastery for the subject at hand. This was no surprise. An Asia scholar with a Ph.D. from Columbia University, Armacost taught for a decade at Pomona College, Johns Hopkins, Georgetown and Tokyo’s International Christian University before joining the State Department in 1972.

His first diplomatic assignment was as special assistant to former Ambassador Robert S. Ingersoll in Tokyo. He rose in the Foreign Service to become assistant secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, ambassador to the Philippines and undersecretary for political affairs--the third-ranking official in the State Department--before President Bush appointed him to succeed Mansfield.

In contrast with Mansfield, who was relatively inactive at the end of his term partly because of a heart ailment, Armacost has pursued an aggressive schedule of meetings and speaking engagements, and he has established himself as a no-nonsense envoy who does not shy away from provocative remarks.

Last autumn, for example, Armacost chided the Japanese for the logical inconsistency of hiding behind a defense of “cultural uniqueness” during trade negotiations while taking deep offense at foreign “revisionist” critics who charge that Japan wants to play by its own set of rules. He also lambasted the Japanese press for its excessive use of military terminology in writing about trade friction.

“The context is entirely different now than what it was during the Mansfield era,” said Kazuo Nukazawa, managing director of Keidanren (Federation of Economic Organizations), a powerful group of business leaders. “This is the age when America is worried about losing its hegemony. Mr. Armacost exhibits a lot of candor because he has to.”

Yet Armacost is highly respected by the Japanese for his “professionalism,” Nukazawa added. “I honestly haven’t heard anybody criticize him yet.”

If Armacost’s arrival in Tokyo marked the appearance of greater focus and coherence in America’s policy toward Japan, it also signaled potential succor for the long-suffering U.S. exporter. In his Senate confirmation hearings, Armacost declared that an ambassador in Tokyo should be the embassy’s “first commercial officer.” That is a pledge on which he appears to be making good.

“We’ve been getting an immediate response from the embassy on our trade problems over the past three or four months,” said James B. Vaughn, director of the California Office of Trade and Investment in Tokyo. “It’s much more aggressive, faster and more efficient than in the past.”

Last October, Vaughn sent a plea for help to Armacost after a California exporter had his $50,000 shipment of canned fruit tied up at Narita Airport near Tokyo by overzealous health inspectors, and an embassy staffer got back to him within six hours to say that the problem was being worked on. Embassy officials went to the airport the next day to help get the shipment through customs.

“Times are changing,” Vaughn said.

Clyde V. Prestowitz Jr., a former Commerce Department negotiator and an outspoken critic of U.S. trade policy with Japan, gives high marks to Armacost.

“I find him to be refreshing,” Prestowitz said in a telephone interview. “I think he’s trying to represent America’s interests in a balanced way. And he understands the complex intertwining of the two economies.”

Armacost has become personally involved in trade negotiations, attending the first two rounds of talks on the Structural Impediments Initiative last year. These consultations are aimed at identifying and resolving structural problems in the Japanese and U.S. economic systems that supposedly account for why macroeconomic measures have yet to correct the trade imbalance.

Japan’s collusive business practices in distribution and equity markets, and America’s budget deficit and low savings rate, for example, are cited among others as impeding natural adjustments in trade flows. The Bush Administration has demanded that Japan show “results” in an interim report on the talks due in March, warning that the wrath of Congress may result if progress is not made.

“People are obviously looking for evidence of seriousness by the (Japanese) government,” Armacost said. The U.S. side wants to see “indications of plans, and I hope there would be timetables for the implementation of these plans--an earnest, serious effort by the government to step up to these problems.”

American “frustration” with Japan has been a common thread in many of Armacost’s public remarks. At issue is Japan’s reluctance to dismantle certain protectionist practices designed to promote postwar economic growth and development, but are now obsolete, Armacost said. Barriers to U.S. investment in Japan, for instance, raise questions of reciprocity and fairness.

“Undoubtedly, the frustration has been increased by the fact that Japan has been highly successful at a time we are . . . struggling to maintain competitiveness,” he said.

Despite the new emphasis on economic matters--and the recent relaxation of Cold War tensions--the U.S.-Japan security alliance is here to stay, Armacost said.

“The existence of a clear-cut palpable Soviet threat has provided a lot of cement for the relationship,” he said. “But we share a lot of common values, and most countries in this region regard the security link between the U.S. and Japan as something that stabilizes the region, a fact that suggests (the alliance) can have life after the Cold War.”