COPING WITH THE WEAK DOLLAR : Bentsen Voices Strong Support for Dollar : Currency: But Treasury secretary’s bid to rally the greenback fails to keep it from hitting new low against the yen.

Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen issued a strong defense of the dollar Tuesday and said the Clinton Administration has no interest in seeing its value fall, but his remarks were virtually ignored in early trading today in Tokyo.

Even though it was the Clinton Adminstration’s most forceful statement yet on the current turmoil in the currency markets, the dollar fell in Japan to touch a new global postwar low of 99.10 yen before closing the morning at 99.37 yen. The dollar closed the day Tuesday in New York at 99.95 yen.

“He didn’t explain the details or how to raise the dollar rate against other currencies,” said Shigeru Akiba, branch manager of UBS Securities Ltd. in Tokyo. “The market didn’t think about Bentsen’s comments as a positive factor yet.”

Bentsen’s carefully worded remarks, delivered in New York, were intended to send an unequivocal message of support that could not be overlooked by the global money markets.

“We believe a stronger dollar is better for our economy and better for the world’s economy,” he said.

The speech came at the end of a day in which the dollar, particularly volatile in the past week, continued to flirt with record low values in relation to the Japanese yen.

In the sensitive world of currency trading, little more than a wink and a nod from an official such as Bentsen can send prices spiraling upward or downward. Thus, Bentsen has been particularly careful in the past year to say no more or less than he wants when talking about the value of the dollar relative to other currencies.

In an address to the Foreign Policy Assn. of New York, Bentsen said the volatility in the currency markets, despite the United States’ strong economic performance, had become “a major concern of mine.”

“I know there are people who think we have some strategy in Washington of driving down dollars or using the dollar as some kind of bargaining chip,” he said. “Let me say clearly--and I speak for the entire Administration--this is not the case.”

His statement came on the heels of suggestions that have circulated persistently in Washington that Bentsen and U.S. Trade Representative Mickey Kantor privately favor a weaker dollar as a means of dealing with the U.S. trade deficit with Japan.

A dollar that is worth less compared to the yen would theoretically make Japanese goods more expensive in the United States and U.S. goods more affordable in Japan.

“The dollar is not a tool of our trade policy,” Bentsen said. “We do care about exporting more. But we want to achieve more exports by helping American producers, by opening markets and by encouraging growth in foreign economies, not by devaluing our currency.”

In the carefully choreographed world of international currency activities, Bentsen’s speech was timed to take place after trading had ended in the United States but at the start of the trading day in Asia.

But there is a large degree of skepticism among experts that the Administration can have a significant impact on the currency traders with words alone. Rather, the belief is that it will take noticeable increases in interest rates to attract support for the dollar. Higher rates would give investments in dollars greater lasting value.

As the dollar began its most recent fall, the Administration had been largely silent, although it engineered a one-day effort by the central banks of 17 major economies to purchase greenbacks in an effort to shore up the value of the dollar. The fall continued anyway.

In generally mild language, Bentsen had been offering signals of support, without stepping forcefully into the issue. But even his acknowledgment Monday that the subject of the dollar’s value would be on the table next week when President Clinton and his counterparts from Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan meet in Naples, Italy, was enough to shake up stock markets.

“Everyone’s been waiting for something,” a Treasury official said, adding, “This is something.”

In his speech, Bentsen lauded the fundamental strength of the U.S. economy and said it has performed better than the economies in any of the six other major industrialized nations.

“No country can be indifferent to a fall in its currency, and the recent movements in the dollar could hurt recovery abroad,” he said, referring to an important issue to the United States because of its heavy reliance on foreign purchases of U.S. goods in a global economy.

“But nothing that has happened in the financial markets shakes my confidence in America’s economic recovery and underlying soundness,” he said.

Times staff writer David Holley in Tokyo contributed to this report.