Repeated Trade Crises Test Ties

Once again, the United States and Japan have gone to the brink in a trade dispute and, at the last gasping moment, tiptoed back from it.

Once again, Washington and Tokyo have managed to avoid letting commercial frictions undermine the essential bargain forged between them during the Cold War--that the United States would help guarantee Japan’s security in exchange for the right to keep troops on Japanese soil.

Now the question is whether that relationship can last--and for how long. How many more trade showdowns will it take before the two nations decide that economic competition has permanently altered the links that have bound the United States and Japan together in the postwar era?

The Clinton Administration was prepared to call Wednesday’s agreement on autos and auto parts a watershed. “This breakthrough is a major step toward free trade throughout the world,” President Clinton proclaimed at the White House.

Critics, by contrast, view the deal as yet another in a long series in which Japan pledges to open its markets, U.S. leaders accept the promises, harmony is declared--and, two years later, new trade frictions send the two nations to the brink again.

“The Japanese are going to keep the United States on the string for a few more years,” said Chalmers Johnson, president of the Japan Policy Research Institute.

“They are essentially buying time to milk the Cold War relationship a little longer until their ascendancy in Asia is irreversible,” Johnson said. “Japan has profited more from the Cold War than any other nation, and it has an enormous interest in preserving Cold War relations as long as the United States will tolerate it.”

In the very first days of his Administration, Clinton served notice that his policy toward Japan would be different from that of his predecessors--both more confrontational and more focused on economic disputes.

When Kiichi Miyazawa, then Japan’s prime minister, wanted to visit Washington immediately after Clinton’s inauguration to symbolize Japan’s role as No. 1 in the panoply of America’s friends, the new Administration rebuffed him, saying there first needed to be progress on the trade imbalance.

“Whenever there is a new Administration, they always blow a lot of hot air, but after several months it quiets down,” Miyazawa grumbled. When the prime minister finally came to the White House three months later, however, Clinton went out of his way to underscore the differences between the two countries, particularly in the arena of trade.

Wednesday’s agreement on autos and auto parts may take that particular issue off the table, at least for another couple of years. But other trade conflicts are brewing, involving efforts by Kodak and Federal Express to do business in or with Japan.

While pressing forward more aggressively on trade matters, the Administration has tried to preserve the essence of the broader relationship between the United States and Japan. It rejects the arguments of critics such as Johnson, who contend that the military alliance between the United States and Japan is a Cold War anachronism.

Like their predecessors in the George Bush and Ronald Reagan administrations, Clinton Administration officials regard the military ties, which provide America with bases in Japan, as a good deal for the United States.

“It is in America’s interest to maintain the alliance structure with countries like Japan and South Korea because these relationships are the basis for regional stability,” Assistant Secretary of Defense Joseph S. Nye Jr. wrote in a recent article in Foreign Affairs magazine.

Last February, in a formal statement of Defense Department policy toward Asia, the Pentagon said the security alliance with Japan was “the linchpin of United States security policy in Asia. . . . United States bases in Japan are well-located for rapid deployment to virtually any trouble spot in the region.”

In public, the Administration has repeatedly claimed that intensified trade frictions will not affect the political and military ties between the United States and Japan. Winston Lord, assistant secretary of state for East Asian affairs, said in a speech early this year that the United States had insulated its security ties with Japan from trade frictions.

Yet some U.S. officials privately acknowledge concerns that the imposition of sanctions in the auto dispute could have led to a general estrangement between the two countries.

“There’s been a certain lack of confidence as to where this relationship is going,” admitted one Administration official. “I don’t think anyone in any responsible position in either government is thinking about changing it. But politically, there’s been a restlessness on both sides. . . . I think the tone will change now, for the better.”

Over the past two decades, every U.S.-Japanese confrontation over trade has triggered warnings of crisis. One typical news account: “Two trains on the same track, heading for a collision. A marriage on the rocks, facing divorce. . . . The sense of crisis is palpable.”

Those words, which could easily have been used on the eve of this week’s auto agreement, were actually written by a Tokyo correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor in late 1989.

Nevertheless, some of the underlying political dynamics have changed. The Clinton Administration’s trade disputes with Japan have been qualitatively different from those of its predecessors, and the change does not bode well for the two countries.

During the Reagan and Bush administrations, there were deep political divisions in America over U.S. policy toward Japan.

On Capitol Hill, some members of Congress smashed Toshiba computers, while others pleaded for understanding of Japan. On the 1992 campaign trail, Ross Perot railed against Japan and the trade deficit, while then-President Bush talked soothingly about the importance of American security ties with Tokyo.

By contrast, during the Clinton Administration’s dispute with Japan over autos and auto parts, the President enjoyed overwhelming political support for his tough stance.

The leading Republican presidential candidate, Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole of Kansas, and House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) lined up behind Clinton--one of the few occasions this year on which they have publicly supported the President.

“Make no mistake about it: Congress backs what the Administration is doing,” Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, another Republican presidential candidate, told reporters at a Capitol Hill news conference Monday. “It is bipartisan, Democrat and Republican, both houses.”

At the same time, Japan’s chief trade negotiator, Ryutaro Hashimoto, seemed to enjoy widespread support in Japan after vowing to resist U.S. pressure. Attitudes there appear to be solidifying too.

“With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the emergence of a new generation in Japan, it seems inevitable that Japanese foreign policy will take a more national turn,” former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger observed recently.

That could open the way to a future trade dispute in which the two sides could not bridge their differences.

Administration officials hope Wednesday’s agreement on autos will narrow the stubbornly enormous U.S. trade deficit with Japan. If it doesn’t, the United States will be left with the choice of either accepting the deficit as a permanent feature of relations between the two countries or threatening still tougher action next time.

U.S. officials insist that the close ties between the two countries can survive these recurring trade disputes. Others are increasingly skeptical.

“In many ways, this close relationship is only a superficial continuation of policy trajectories established during the Cold War,” wrote defense specialists Patrick M. Cronin and Michael J. Green for the National Defense University recently.

“The reality is that today the U.S.-Japan alliance is on shakier ground than most will admit.”