High-Tech Policy Gets Mixed Foreign Reviews : Japan Sees Clinton’s $17-Billion Plan Mirroring Its Own; European Reaction Is Negative

President Clinton’s $17-billion program of government support for high technology has won applause in Japan as an imitation of Japanese-style industrial policy but raised new concerns in Europe that it will be just one more U.S. barrier to free trade.

In Japan, government officials and business executives welcomed Clinton’s approach--as opposed to such protectionist measures as quotas and tariffs on imports--as the right way to turn around the U.S. trade deficit.

“We need a strong America,” said Makoto Kuroda, managing director of Mitsubishi Corp. and former senior official with the Ministry of International Trade and Industry. “It’s good for the U.S., good for Japan and good for the world. We are not afraid of fair competition.”

Europeans, by contrast, viewed Clinton’s program as the latest in a series of protectionist measures that have included increased duties on foreign steel and a threat to bar European Community countries from bidding for some U.S. government procurement contracts.

Particularly troubling to Europe was the way Clinton coupled the announcement of his high-tech package with a denunciation of EC subsidies to Airbus, the European-built commercial airliners that compete globally with U.S. aircraft.

“I do not say we are in a trade war, but we are now engaged in a period of strong tensions,” said Bruno Durieux, France’s foreign trade minister. “It is extremely dangerous.”

Clinton launched his proposal--$17 billion in government spending over the next four years on such projects as a national computer network and a non-polluting automobile--in visits Monday to California’s Silicon Valley and the Boeing Co. headquarters in Everett, Wash.

Kuroda said many Japanese were “a little relieved” that Clinton had apparently decided that he would rather emulate Japanese industrial policy than fight it. He said Republican administrations of the last 12 years had protested the Japanese approach as a distortion of free markets.

“Now Americans are clearly saying, ‘We are in support of investing in technology for the sake of the economy and the world.’ We say, ‘OK, come on. That’s what we’ve been doing for 20 years.’ ”

Shinzo Kobori, economic counselor for C. Itoh, a major trading firm, said the Japanese preferred strong U.S. industries to weak ones that complain about unfair foreign competition and ask for protection.

“President Clinton’s industrial policy is not close to protectionism, so there’s nothing for us to complain about,” Kobori said. “And the end effect might be better, because strong industry and stronger competitors in the U.S., although sometimes a headache, could also turn out to be good partners in projects of global magnitude.”

Kobori noted that in fields ranging from semiconductors to steel, major U.S. firms were already allied with Japanese partners in cooperative ventures: Motorola and Toshiba on the next generation of semiconductors; Motorola and Sony on multimedia; AT&T;, NEC and Matsushita on microprocessors; Alcoa and Kobe Steel on aluminum; Boeing and Mitsubishi, Kawasaki and Fuji Heavy Industries on aerospace, and even Budweiser and Kirin on beer.

Kobori also said the United States might actually improve on the Japanese model of industrial policy by letting the private sector manage government-financed projects, in contrast to the tendency of Japanese bureaucrats to want to exercise control.

But not all Japanese are so optimistic. A major question is whether Americans can overcome their squabbling special interests and philosophical skepticism toward government-industry cooperation to pull together and make sacrifices in the name of national interest.

“I see a lot of skepticism or pessimism among professional Japanese,” said a U.S. businessman in Tokyo who asked not to be named. “Some Japanese tend to be jaded. They see the U.S. as a corrupt society full of lawyers and lobbyists selling their souls.

“Among these (Japanese),” he said, “I see a dismissal: ‘Well, it sounds nice, but can you really do it?’ ”

Europe is concerned not so much about America’s ability to implement an industrial policy as about the consequences if it does. The European reaction was colored by a series of recent transatlantic trade spats over agriculture, steel, government procurement and, most recently, commercial aircraft.

In France, which among all the European countries has had the sourest trade relations with the United States, the response to Clinton’s program was the most skeptical. A French Foreign Ministry official, listing recent U.S. measures against European imports, said: “All this is not in the nature of relaxing the commercial atmosphere between Europe and the United States.”

In his appearance at Boeing, which announced 28,000 layoffs last week, Clinton particularly alarmed Europeans by castigating Europe’s subsidies for Airbus Industrie, the four-nation consortium whose commercial aircraft compete with Boeing’s for world markets.

“A lot of these layoffs would not have been announced had it not been for the $26 billion that the United States sat by and let Europe plow into Airbus over the past several years,” he said.

Europeans, who in turn charge the United States with indirectly subsidizing Boeing through defense contracts, believed that the dispute over Airbus subsidies had been settled last summer when both sides agreed to limit both direct and indirect support of aircraft development.

Sir Leon Brittan, the EC’s trade commissioner, sought to cement that impression. He said James Dobbins, the U.S. ambassador to the EC, had reassured him after Clinton’s remarks that the United States intended to abide by last summer’s agreement.

Others were less conciliatory. German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, in India, complained that U.S. government subsidies for defense contractors helped Boeing every bit as much as direct EC subsidies helped Airbus.

“It is time that we stopped talking about each other and began talking to each other,” Kohl said.

Europeans were quick to point out that Clinton, at a time of declining defense budgets, said the United States could no longer rely on spinoffs from defense research to fuel private-sector technology development.

Said a British diplomat in Brussels: “This has confirmed our suspicion that there are some industrial subsidies in the U.S. defense budget.”

Watanabe reported from Tokyo and Havemann from Brussels.