NEWS ANALYSIS : Talks Move to U.S. Strengths : Trade: The unresolved issues are now in areas where the U.S. has a surplus. Insurance, banking and movies are particularly sensitive. But meeting the Dec. 15 deadline may be tough.

Despite general good feeling over the Tokyo Summit’s trade accord on manufactured goods, and a separate new framework for trade talks between the United States and Japan, America’s real competitive interests are at stake in continuing negotiations about services and agriculture.

The United States has a growing trade surplus in such services as air travel and tourism, computer software, telecommunications and entertainment, construction and engineering, banking and finance. Last year, that surplus amounted to roughly $60 billion, almost offsetting the merchandise trade deficit, which was heavily weighted by oil imports.

But a U.S. advantage doesn’t mean smooth sailing in talks that will continue toward the Dec. 15 deadline for an expanded General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. Sharp differences remain with the European Community and Japan on many services.

Banking and finance, for example, presents sensitive questions of bank safety, explains Linn S. Williams, a lawyer with Gibson Dunn & Crutcher in Washington and a former U.S. trade representative. “No treasury department or ministry of finance wants to give up any authority over its banking system,” says Williams. “Insurance is also a difficult field because it is regulated at the state level in our country.”

On telecommunications services, an enormous and growing business worldwide, the United States, Japan and Britain agree that markets should be open, but the nations of continental Europe, particularly Germany, want to retain control. It’s a case of government-owned telephone monopolies fearing competition from such powerhouses as American Telephone & Telegraph, the new British Telecomm-MCI joint venture and Japan’s Nippon Telegraph & Telephone.

Government monopolies already see handwriting on the wall in the success of Pacific Bell, US West and other Baby Bells in providing cellular phone services in Western and Eastern Europe.

On movies, television shows and videos, the United States naturally wants to press a competitive advantage that gives it a $4-billion annual trade surplus. U.S. negotiators oppose any quotas limiting U.S. entertainment on “cultural” grounds. And behind the negotiators stands Jack Valenti and the Motion Picture Assn. of America lobby, say trade specialists in Washington, who add only half in jest, “Valenti would kill all of GATT if the agreement was unfair to U.S. movies.”

Legal services, a field where many will say the lawyer-rich United States has an advantage, is an issue in the trade talks. But don’t laugh. American justice is an export of which we can be proud, Chief Justice Malcolm Lucas of the California Supreme Court said in a recent speech. “Such hallmarks of our jurisprudence as rights of defendants, an honest judiciary, disinterested juries are being adopted by countries such as Argentina and many others,” said Lucas. It’s an important export that may not get measured in dollars and cents.

On agriculture, analysts are confident an overall agreement will be reached even though rhetoric is intense. Officially, France has said it will sign no deal that eliminates subsidies to its farmers. But trade experts in Washington see that as a negotiating ploy, designed to win severance benefits for French farmers from the European Commission in Brussels.

Finally, notes trade consultant Harold Malmgren of Washington’s Malmgren Group, there’s a real question whether all the necessary agreements can be reached before the Dec. 15 deadline set by Congress for completing this round of trade talks. Not everybody is eager for agreement. The European Community, according to some analysts, would rather see GATT expire. That way, goes the reasoning, Western European nations could pursue trade with each other and Eastern Europe, free from Asian competition and U.S. demands for open markets.

But elimination of GATT would be a disaster for any of the trade partners, particularly the United States, which now depends on global trade for one out of every six dollars in its total economy. Trade agreements such as the ones reached in Tokyo this week often seem abstract and impenetrable, but their impact in everyday lives is very real.