Kantor’s Candor : Straight talk from trade envoy in reply to Japan-policy critics

Blunt talk is not the usual tool of diplomacy. But U.S. Trade Representative Mickey Kantor isn’t the conventional diplomat. In a speech Wednesday, Kantor took on the United States’ European allies for knocking President Clinton’s tough trade stance with Japan. By describing the U.S. recipe for easing the $60-billion trade imbalance as a version of “managed trade,” some high-level Europeans--most recently Peter Sutherland, head of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade--have, in effect, been siding with Tokyo.

Kantor would have none of that. “It shouldn’t escape our attention (that) the European Union has been just as frustrated as the United States in opening the Japanese market,” he said, “ . . . the Europeans are always delighted when they can hold our coats and we can go out and get our noses bloodied.” (See today’s Commentary page for more.) Kantor also noted the hypocrisy of Europeans accusing the U.S. of violating free trade as they protect their own markets (e.g., broadcast materials).

Kantor is right: Japan needs to be more open. But if there is an Achilles’ heel in the U.S. strategy, it is in the perception--an incorrect one perpetuated by Tokyo--that Japan must commit itself to setting specific market shares. That would be managed trade. The Administration needs to make clear that the goal is to eliminate barriers, such as in the Motorola case, not to set quotas. To elucidate, Kantor could point to the insistence of Tokyo, which only recently let U.S. rice in, that foreign rice be mixed with domestic rice. Now that’s managing trade.