The World : Ties With Japan: The Ticking Time Bomb in Clinton’s Foreign Policy : Trade: The President claims success in “rebalancing” relations with Tokyo, but the widening deficit brings closer the day of reckoning.

During the past few weeks, President Bill Clinton has taken to claiming success for his policy toward Japan. On Oct. 14, while defending his Administration’s handling of the crises in Haiti and Somalia, the President said he has a good record on “the biggest issues affecting the future and security of the United States”--and prominent among these, he went on, was his work in forging a new relationship between Washington and Tokyo.

That assertion is questionable, at best. Indeed, by the one overriding priority Clinton set for his Administration--reducing the U.S. trade deficit with Japan--it is downright false.

In his summit meeting with former Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa in April, Clinton’s first meeting with a Japanese leader, he said the United States was seeking a major “rebalancing” of the trade ties between the two countries. His Administration would focus less on the quality of discussions than on “results.” Yet, late last month, on the day after the President praised his Japan policy, newly released trade figures showed that the trade imbalance between the two nations has grown worse since Clinton took office.

A more reliable indicator of the current state of relations between Washington and Tokyo is how the President and other White House officials have been offhandedly invoking Japan as America’s enemy in their effort to sway American public opinion to support the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Last Monday, Clinton warned that if NAFTA doesn’t survive a congressional test on Nov. 17, Japanese companies will rush into Mexico “like flies on a June bug.” He added: “I would, if I were the prime minister of Japan, have the finance minister of my country in to see the president of Mexico on the 18th of November. . .to say: ‘We’ve got more money than they do. Make the deal with us.’ ”

Ironically, Japan is nearly as nervous as the White House that NAFTA will be defeated, worrying that its downfall would represent a historic turn toward protectionism in the United States. Japanese officials in Washington are known to have protested to the White House to stop using Japan as the bogyman in the NAFTA debate, but to no avail.

In 1992, the final year of the Bush Administration, the U.S. deficit with Japan was $50 billion, more than 59% of the total U.S. trade deficit with the world. On Oct. 16, the Commerce Department reported that for the first eight months of this year, the deficit with Japan is about $40 billion--a rate that would work out to about $60 billion for the year. And while the situation fluctuates from month to month, it seems to be getting worse. The deficit in August was $5.3 billion.

As an explanation, Administration officials might point out that Japan is in the midst of recession, making it much more difficult for the country to buy U.S. goods. That is true, so far as it goes. But if Clinton makes this argument, he will sound remarkably like the Bush Administration, which said the same thing in 1992 and was roundly denounced by the Clinton campaign for making excuses.

Even some members of Clinton’s Administration privately concede that Washington is making little headway with Tokyo on reducing the trade deficit, and that a confrontation is looming. If relations between the United States and Japan seem tranquil at the moment, it is only because the President--distracted and preoccupied by the crises in Somalia and Haiti abroad and health care and NAFTA at home--is postponing the inevitable showdown.

As in the past, Japanese officials have been masterful at buying time and pleading for delay. Whatever the political situation happens to be in Tokyo, Japan finds reasons to argue that now is not the time for the United States to press too hard on trade issues. On the eve of the President’s trip to Tokyo last July, the Japanese contended it was the wrong time for Clinton to push, because Japan was in the midst of a political campaign to elect a new government.

Since then, they have suggested it is the wrong time to press trade issues, because doing so might upset the new government of Morihiro Hosakawa. Presumably, if Hosakawa’s government grows weak, Japan would then argue that it is the wrong time for the United States to push, because that could cause his fragile governing coalition to collapse. And if the coalition falls apart, the cycle would be complete: It will be time for new elections again and time for Japanese officials to urge the United States to hold off until a new government is elected.

One underlying assumption behind Japan’s pleas for delay seems to be that the right time for Washington to press economic issues with Tokyo is when the Japanese government is in a position of strength and durability--a circumstance that would put American trade negotiators at a disadvantage and that, in any case, is rarely achieved under Japan’s current political system. Another assumption seems to be that the United States has an obligation to shore up the Japanese government, even if Washington has to abstain from advancing U.S. interests and a sense of fairness in order to do so.

The Administration may have good reasons for postponing the confrontation with Japan over trade. Perhaps, Clinton wants to get a NAFTA victory first, which could strengthen America’s position in the international economy. He may also want to enlist Japan’s help in persuading France and other European countries to finish up the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, which is supposed to be concluded next month. Clinton may be waiting to confront Japan until after he can shore up America’s shaky relations with China.

If Clinton is delaying for these reasons, neither he nor his aides are admitting it. Instead, they are pointing to Japan as one of the big successes of the President’s foreign policy. But there is no sign yet of the “rebalancing” of trade relations the President originally demanded. One of the centerpieces of Clinton’s campaign was its invocation of the embarrassment and humiliation of Bush’s January, 1992, visit to Tokyo. Yet, if economic relations between Washington and Tokyo continue on their current course, the only change Clinton may have to show for himself in the 1996 campaign will be to claim that he had a stronger stomach and didn’t get sick at the banquets.