Trade Deficit and Japan

* Re “The Cost of Outmoded Security Ideas Is Trade Deficits Forever,” by David Friedman, Opinion, May 21:

I don’t care if Friedman, a lawyer, engages in paranoid U.S. vs. Japan “crisis-simulation exercises” in his free time, but since attempts are made to mischaracterize the Japanese, I decided to respond.

Contrary to his claim that “unlike the welcome afforded [Hideo] Nomo [a Japanese Los Angeles Dodgers’ pitcher] . . . Japan views hiring non-native athletes as a necessary evil,” Japanese baseball fans and sumo fans cheer American players and wrestlers much more enthusiastically than American sports fans do foreigners in America. Could you imagine Americans cheer a Japanese boxer fighting an American boxer? In the United States, the achievements by the people of different nationalities or races have often been ignored or devalued, and whenever they become a threat to one’s self-esteem or power, their talents and cultures are ridiculed. Such a defensive tendency to discredit others while rewarding and taking credit for oneself is an unfortunate trend in today’s America, not in Japan.

Friedman also states that the U.S.-Japan security alliance is the costly legacy of the Cold War. Wrong again. The truly costly legacy of the Cold War, I believe, is us-versus-them paranoia afflicting him and others in our society.

TOSHI TOMITANI

Long Beach

* One more reasonable solution to President Clinton’s proposal regarding the trade deficit would be a $2,000 import levy on all Japanese cars, applied directly to the deficit until we are equal. Why should a former Axis partner be dictating debilitating economic sanctions to its subsequent benefactor? Bringing felony bribery charges against House and Senate members who have been on Japanese car manufacturers’ lobbyist payrolls for years would also be beneficial.

WILLIAM H. CHRISTIANSEN

Los Angeles

* The 100% tariff on certain Japanese luxury autos is long, long overdue. While I sympathize with the concerns of the several dealers (and employees) interviewed recently, this is hardly the doomsday event they are forecasting. The Japanese are superb business people. They will do what is in their best interest. It is unlikely that they’ll decide to exit the luxury car market in the U.S.

I commend Clinton Administration officials for this action and I hope they do not back down now, at the eleventh hour.

DONALD ROWAN

Placentia