U.S.-Japan Trade Talks Make Progress, Both Sides Say : Commerce: ‘Framework’ discussions end with hope for concluding an agreement before summit next year.
A two-week round of U.S.-Japan “trade framework” talks concluded Friday with both sides noting progress toward an agreement intended to make Japan more open to foreign goods and services.
Sozaburo Okamatsu, a vice minister at the Ministry of International Trade and Industry, said that “big differences” remain between the two sides in their attempt to reach an agreement. But he added, “I’m sure it can be finalized by the middle of January.”
The two sides have pledged to try to agree on measures in several priority areas before President Clinton and Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa meet in an early-1994 summit. Those areas include automobiles and auto parts, insurance and government procurement of telecommunications and medical equipment. The goal is to reduce Japan’s massive global trade surplus, expected to run about $150 billion this year.
Deputy U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky commented on a separate U.S.-Japan dispute over foreign access to the Japanese construction market, reiterating that if Japan does not make “constructive proposals” by a Nov. 1 deadline, Washington will impose retaliatory sanctions.
In what could be a step toward resolving that dispute, Hosokawa told a Cabinet meeting Friday, according to a summary of his remarks released by the Foreign Ministry, that “basic plans to introduce an open competitive bidding system” on major public works projects should be compiled “within this month.”
Negotiators for both sides have remained secretive about the detailed contents of the general framework trade talks. But Washington is openly pressing Tokyo to take sufficient market-opening measures so that over a period of about four years, the foreign market share in many of the priority areas would rise toward levels more typical of foreign market shares in other industrial countries.
As an example, Barshefsky cited statistics showing that the total foreign share of telecommunications equipment and services in the Japanese market is about 5%, while in the rest of the G-7 group of major industrialized countries, the foreign telecommunications market share averages about 25%.
A key point of friction in the talks has been a Japanese perception that when U.S. officials cite such figures, they are trying to establish numerical targets for the growth of imports here, something Tokyo has said it will not accept. But Barshefsky said these numbers are being raised in the negotiations “to demonstrate . . . that Japan’s market does not operate like markets of the other industrialized nations with respect to its receptivity to imports.”
“These data . . . form the conceptual basis for our aim in these talks that Japan move in line with the G-7 and take on a global economic responsibility,” she said.
The next round of talks is set to begin the week of Nov. 8 in Washington. As for measuring progress toward market opening, the United States is not seeking “a single-point target,” Barshefsky said, but “a series of qualitative and quantitative factors which would be considered in totality.”
