Kaifu Rebuked for Promising Bush Too Much

Opposition leaders in Parliament on Monday rebuked Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu for promising too much to President Bush, and Kaifu deflected criticism by playing down the commitments he made during the summit weekend in Rancho Mirage.

The core issue in the session, during which Kaifu answered questions on the policy speech he gave Friday before departing for his rush visit to Southern California, was the dispute over revision of Japan’s controversial consumption tax.

But the prime minister also took heat from the opposition for his attempt at statesmanship.

“Prime Minister Kaifu, what on earth did you promise to the President?” Takako Doi, chairwoman of the Japan Socialist Party, asked Kaifu in a mocking tone.

Kaifu, who assured Bush he would exert political leadership at home to remove structural trade barriers in the Japanese economy and cut Japan’s $49-billion trade surplus with the United States, appeared to be backing away from that challenge, one day after his return.

“The summit was not a negotiation and not something leading to an accord,” Kaifu told Parliament. “We held sufficient generalized discussions, but we didn’t touch upon specific issues such as the contents of the 301 (unfair trade complaints) or the large retail store law or the rice market.”

The opposition, led by Doi and her Socialists, won a majority in the upper house of Parliament last summer, partly because it wooed the votes of farmers and small retailers by campaigning on a protectionist platform.

Yomiuri, the country’s largest daily, warned in an editorial Monday against making a scapegoat out of Kaifu for Japan’s trade woes.

“We should not blame Kaifu alone for the current state of affairs,” it editorialized. “Japan invited this crisis by not seriously addressing problems that existed long before the prime minister took office.”