U.S. and Japanese Car Makers Meet : Autos: Closed to the press, the talks come after a highly publicized squabble in Tokyo.
Five months after a disastrous trade summit in Tokyo, the chairmen of the Big Three U.S. auto makers and their Japanese counterparts met for the second time in an effort to reduce trade tensions between the two rival industries.
They convened at a “neutral” site a few miles west of Chicago and observed a pact to shun all contact with the media. As a result of such delicate maneuvering, the executives managed to avoid the public show of animosity and embarrassment that punctuated their White House-sponsored meeting in Tokyo last January.
But at a news conference after the meeting, it appeared that they had also failed to reach any specific agreements on the contentious issues of access to the Japanese market and increased Japanese purchases of U.S.-made auto parts.
A carefully worded joint communique released by the Motor Vehicle Manufacturer’s Assn. and the Japan Auto Manufacturer’s Assn. outlined an agreement to form two “joint working groups.” One is planned to boost Japanese purchases of U.S. auto parts and sales of U.S. cars to Japan, the other to address environmental and safety issues common to both industries.
But exactly what these groups would do remained vague Monday, and the lack of more specifics prompted some industry observers to criticize the talks as purely ceremonial.
“Absent a U.S. policy explicitly saying the goal is to strengthen traditional U.S. suppliers and make sure the Big Three survive, I don’t think the rest of it makes a hell of a lot of difference,” said Dan Luria, an economist with the Industrial Institute for Technology at the University of Michigan.
Still, representatives of both trade groups insisted that just by virtue of holding civil discussions, progress had been made toward easing tensions between the rival industries.
“We got together, we talked seriously on serious subjects, we agreed to continue work on this,” said Thomas Hanna, president of the U.S. industry trade group. “I consider it a significant meeting.”
Said Paul Willen, an associate at the Economic Strategy Institute in Washington: “The first time they went in together it was a mess. But it’s sort of like the U.S.-Soviet summit: If you do it enough, you get used to it and it reduces tensions.”
Despite some evidence of cooperative goodwill and a mutual endorsement of the “friendly atmosphere” and “continued dialogue,” there were signs that peaceful coexistence does not come naturally to the two auto superpowers.
It took about half of the four-hour meeting to hash out the 40-line joint statement, for example.
In a deviation from the planned agenda, General Motors Corp. Chairman Robert C. Stempel and Nissan Motor Corp. President Yutaka Kume--the chairmen of their respective industry trade associations--spent two sessions totaling nearly two hours in a closed-off room, working on the page-long summary of the discussions, while the other 30-odd industry and government officials on each side caucused in separate rooms.
JAMA Vice Chairman Takao Tominaga acknowledged that Nissan’s Kume “spoke strongly” against pending U.S. trade legislation--supported by Chrysler Chairman Lee A. Iacocca and Ford Chairman Harold A. Poling--that seeks to cap production of Japanese cars in this country.
And MVMA’s Hanna said Iacocca “spoke up” about his concerns regarding the Japanese auto maker’s contribution to the $40-billion U.S. trade deficit with Japan.
There was also some disagreement about what role the two governments should play at this meeting and the as-yet-unscheduled future gatherings.
At the Tokyo talks, Commerce Department Undersecretary Michael Farron chaired the meetings, and Iacocca said last week Farron wished he were doing so again.
But at a private news conference for Japanese reporters Sunday evening, Kume said Farron had originally offered to chair this one as well. The Japanese, who believed that the most recent meeting followed too closely on the first, demurred.
“You get more done with business-to-business meetings,” Kume said. “Without the government, it is more effective.”
Not yet recovered from the public relations nightmare of the Tokyo trip, the executives appeared largely united on keeping their divisions to themselves. Aside from Kume’s Sunday breach, the meeting participants scrupulously followed the gag rule.
Even the normally irrepressible Iacocca--who met briefly with Mitsubishi Motors Corp. Chairman Toyoo Tate after the meeting--said only that the talks had gone “fine, just fine.”
“Good meeting,” was the succinct commentary of GM’s Stempel.
