U.S. Demands Meet Resistance in Japan : Trade: Lawmakers in Tokyo criticize economic reforms suggested by the United States as too time-consuming.

Japanese legislators, meeting with U.S. officials Tuesday, balked at American demands that they enact broad economic reforms to help shrink the U.S. deficit in trade with Japan.

Japanese members of the Japan-U.S. Parliamentarians League told U.S. Ambassador to Japan Michael H. Armacost and other U.S. Embassy officials that reform of Japan’s land-use policies and its retail distribution system would be difficult to achieve quickly, lawmakers attending the breakfast meeting said.

At Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu’s request, the Japanese government has drawn up proposals aimed at meeting U.S. requests made in trade talks called the “Structural Impediments Initiative.”

In remarks to Parliament, Japanese officials have said the reforms should be undertaken for the sake of Japanese consumers.

But other leaders of the governing Liberal Democratic Party are less conciliatory, said LDP lawmaker Takujiro Hamada, who chaired the meeting.

“The parliamentarians said that resistance to the reforms was very strong in their constituencies and that it would take a long time to carry out the reforms suggested by the United States in the trade talks,” Hamada said.

“The opinions expressed by the Japanese legislators were rather severe,” said Ichiji Ishii, another Liberal Democratic lawmaker.

“They said the ‘menu’ of U.S. demands was much too big,” said Ishii, referring to reports that Washington has given Japan a list of more than 200 suggestions aimed at eliminating structural barriers it said prevent foreign companies from entering Japanese markets.

U.S. officials attending Tuesday’s meeting had nothing to add to the account given by Hamada and Ishii.

The United States contends that high land prices and inefficiencies in and restrictions on the distribution system make it harder for foreign businesses to enter the Japanese market. Japan says problems on the U.S. side also contribute to the trade imbalance.

In the latest round of trade talks last week, the Japanese side suggested that the United States tax more, wean itself from energy-wasting cars and limit the use of credit cards, the mass circulation newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun reported.

The suggestions were among 80 proposals for cutting the federal budget deficit, increasing savings and investment and improving worker training and education to boost the competitiveness of American exports, it said.

The legislators, who eventually will vote on some of the government’s reform plans, also argued that a reduction in Japan’s $49-billion trade surplus with the United States could be better carried out through other approaches, including “managed trade,” or export-oriented industrial policies, Hamada said.

He said former Foreign Minister Shintaro Abe, widely seen as a likely candidate for prime minister, stressed during the meeting that charges that Japan had done nothing to resolve the trade imbalance were absolutely wrong.

“It seems almost as if Japan is being scolded for having such a powerful, competitive economy,” Hamada said.

Each nation is to come up with an interim report on the SII talks in early April. A final report is expected in July.

In a related development, Japanese people questioned in a nationwide poll were almost evenly split about whether U.S. criticism of Japan’s trade policy is reasonable.

The financial newspaper Nihon Keizai Shimbun said 47.4% of the 6,186 people who responded to the survey said they view U.S. trade complaints as basically reasonable.

This included 9% who said they completely agree with the criticisms and 38.4% who replied that “the U.S. claims are basically right although there are a few points that seem unreasonable,” the newspaper said.

Another 32.9% of the respondents said the criticism was unreasonable, with an additional 6.6% saying the criticism was completely unreasonable.

Another 13.1% said they could not say if the criticism was reasonable, or did not know.

Sixty-three percent of the respondents said Japan should open its rice market at least partially to allow the sale of foreign rice “despite government attempts to keep Japan’s rice market closed,” the newspaper said.