Sanction Threat Sinister but Almost Never Used : Trade: United States and partners usually reach uneasy peace before punitive tariffs become a reality.

The threat of trade sanctions is a big club, waved around amid noisy clamor, but almost never used.

Invariably, the United States and its trading partners reach some kind of uneasy peace before the sanctions become reality.

Often “we reached agreement and ratcheted [the sanctions] back,” said Willard Workman, vice president for international affairs at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. “We usually got much of what we wanted.”

Threats to use sanctions at various times have persuaded the Japanese to agree to informal quotas on shipments of automobiles to the United States. Japanese and European steel producers also were induced to curtail their shipments here.

The possibility of a “yuppie trade war,” with the United States imposing punitive tariffs on French wines and Brie cheese in 1992, was averted when the French agreed to curb some subsidies to their farmers.

President Clinton’s decision Tuesday to impose penalty tariffs of 100% on 13 models of Japanese luxury cars could be “the first step in a trade war or the first gun going off in the election of 1996,” said Claude Barfield, director of trade studies at the American Enterprise Institute.

Although the President has been a committed advocate of stimulating trade and removing barriers, the Administration sees political advantage in suddenly acting tough with Japan, said Barfield.

“The Administration has turned around completely in the last six months” to take a much tougher line in negotiations, he said.

Everyone involved in trade issues knows about the disasters that came with the actual use of sanctions. The United States applied heavy tariffs in 1930, a step that deepened the Great Depression.

Generations of public officials in the last 60 years have talked tough but always managed to find face-saving compromises.

The Cold War helped mightily in solving trade disputes. The United States and its trading partners, concerned about containing the Communist bloc, were anxious to avoid direct challenges to each other over trade.

The “mutual security dependence had kept Europe and Japan responsive to U.S. trade leadership and made leaders in all three inclined to compromise on trade issues in order to preserve the free world coalition,” trade expert I.M. Destler wrote in his book, “American Trade Politics.”

But what Destler called the “security umbrella” no longer shelters trade discussions.

So it is unclear what will happen this time. “In the past, the Japanese have backed down or reached a face-saving compromise one way or another,” Barfield said.

It is not clear, he said, whether the Japanese will fold again at the last minute, or whether they are “fed up with the U.S. pressure” to increase their purchases of American-made autos and parts.

There is still plenty of time to reach a compromise, however, if both sides are willing. The earliest date for the formal imposition of sanctions would be June 28. “I hope an agreement will be reached, an agreement that leads to open markets,” said Workman of the U.S. Chamber.

In waving the sanctions club, “the whole purpose is to not let things get out of hand,” he noted.