U.S.-Japan Car Talks Limp Along Just Days Before Threatened Tariffs : Trade: Both sides say they will spare no effort to resolve the issue before next Wednesday’s deadline.
Renewed talks aimed at resolving a U.S.-Japanese auto-trade dispute made little progress Thursday, but both sides pledged to do their utmost to find a solution before the most punitive U.S. trade sanctions in history are imposed.
“My frank impression is that the positions of Japan and the United States are very far apart,” said Atsushi Ohi, director of the Japanese trade ministry’s automotive industry division. “We will spare no effort, and use all the available time, to find a solution.”
The United States says it will begin imposing 100% tariffs on 13 models of Japanese luxury cars next Wednesday if Japan does not take steps to open up its auto and auto parts markets to American manufacturers.
With just four business days remaining until the deadline, Japanese delegates are complaining that Washington is resisting compromise, while American officials are accusing the Japanese of distorting the U.S. position.
President Clinton, in a campaign-style appearance before New Jersey auto workers Thursday, took a hard line on the issue.
“Their system is not fair,” Clinton said. “It is wrong for America to be leading the way in opening our markets and putting our workers at risk in competition, and not have the same rights in every other major market in countries that are as rich as we are.
“I don’t want any special breaks, but I do want a fair deal,” he said.
In Geneva, Ohi said that, during Thursday’s three hours of negotiations, “the basic position of the United States remained unchanged.”
“They are still sticking to the idea of having some kind of numerical target [for market access],” he said. “We will not be able to move forward in these discussions unless the U.S. side comes up with some sort of concession regarding the idea of numerical targets, which the Japanese side cannot possibly accept.”
In a news conference at the U.S. mission here, Jeffrey Garten, U.S. undersecretary of commerce for international trade, responded that Washington is not seeking numerical targets at all but rather “a system that allows us to track progress once the agreement is in place.”
For example, he said the United States would like to be able to count how many auto dealerships in Japan sell American cars and to make sure they are in reasonable locations. “Our ability to monitor the implementation [of an agreement] is exceedingly important,” Garten said.
By calling this demand a quest for numerical targets, he said, Japan has “terribly distorted” the U.S. negotiating position.
In addition to the issue of auto dealerships, Washington is asking Japan to open its markets for auto parts and to deregulate the way auto repairs are handled. Under the existing system, officials say, it is extremely difficult for car owners in Japan to have their vehicles fixed at independent garages that carry non-Japanese parts.
The talks were continuing at a technical level Thursday evening and are to continue at a higher level today.
Whatever the merits of the U.S. negotiating stance, the domestic political power of Clinton’s position on Japanese trade was evident.
The auto workers at Ford Motor Co.’s Edison assembly plant in central New Jersey, who build Ranger compact pickup trucks, roared with a passion Clinton does not often hear.
“He’s taken them on,” said Earl Nail, bargaining agent for Local 980 of the United Auto Workers union, to cries of approval. “‘He’s got the guts to do that, and I love him.
“All I ask is, get us more jobs,” Nail said.
Not mentioned in the speeches was the fact that Ford itself stands to be hurt, as well as helped, by the tariffs. The company owns 25% of Mazda, builder of a luxury model, the 929, that could be wiped out of the U.S. market by the levies.
Meanwhile, more than 100 economists of varying ideological stripes urged Clinton to drop the threatened trade sanctions. In a letter to the President, the economists asserted that the new World Trade Organization will be “seriously and permanently damaged” if the United States bypasses it and imposes unilateral sanctions.
Among the 111 economists signing the letter were a broad range of liberals and conservatives, including two Nobel Prize winners, liberal James Tobin of Yale and conservative James Buchanan of George Mason University in Virginia.
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Times staff writer Paul Richter in Edison, N.J., and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
