U.S. Business Leaders Are ‘Inferior,’ Japanese Says : Trade: Outspoken lawmaker-author Ishihara also takes a swipe at American politicians.

American business managers are “inferior” and U.S. leaders do not understand either their own country or Japan, a Japanese lawmaker was quoted Saturday as saying.

The comments by Shintaro Ishihara, a former transportation minister, reported by the Kyodo News Service, come a week after House Speaker Yoshio Sakurauchi said American workers are lazy and illiterate and that the United States had become a “subcontractor” for Japan. Those remarks sparked a storm of criticism in the United States.

In another development, a Tokyo newspaper reported that the Big Three U.S. car makers plan to sharply reduce their purchases of Japanese steel. But officials at the auto companies and several Japanese steelmakers would not confirm the report.

The outspoken Ishihara is co-author of the book, “The Japan That Can Say No,” which urges Japan to resist trade demands from the United States. President Bush visited Japan earlier this month to try to pry open the country’s markets to more American products.

Ishihara, a member of Parliament from the governing Liberal Democratic Party, said the U.S. economy could make a rapid recovery with better management, according to Kyodo.

“The quality of American business executives is poor, although the productivity of American workers is comparatively high,” Kyodo quoted him as saying.

Ishihara said Sakurauchi’s remarks about American workers were “half-correct and half-wrong,” Kyodo said.

“He should have said the quality of American business managers is inferior,” Ishihara was quoted as saying. “U.S. management is no good. I guess it is the cultural difference.”

Ishihara also took aim at U.S. politicians.

“The White House and the U.S. Congress are unable to understand Japan, as well as their own country. Even if suggestions for economic recovery are proposed, they don’t even try,” Kyodo quoted him as saying.

Attempts to reach Ishihara on Saturday night were unsuccessful.

The newspaper Tokyo Shimbun quoted unidentified U.S. and Japanese steel industry officials in Washington as saying that General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler Corp. had notified Japanese steelmakers they would reduce their imports of thin-steel panels by 50% from the current 240,000 tons a year, effective immediately. The steel is used mainly in making car bodies and doors.

Four Japanese steelmakers--Nippon Steel, NKK, Sumitomo Metal Industries and Kawasaki Steel--export steel to the U.S. auto makers. Officials at the companies said they were unaware of any such reductions.