Clinton, Hashimoto Face Tough Issues

President Clinton’s meeting tonight in Santa Monica with the new Japanese prime minister, Ryutaro Hashimoto, is intended as a get-acquainted session. But beneath the ceremonial pleasantries lurk deep differences between their governments.

With the U.S. presidential campaign growing more intense, the domestic political scene is now roiled by concerns that the U.S. is being exploited by its longtime trade partner. On the Japanese side, pressure is mounting over the deployment of 47,000 U.S. troops there.

Tossed into the mix is conservative commentator Patrick J. Buchanan’s success in building his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination around attacks on Clinton’s trade policies.

It adds up to an uneasy relationship. “While it is calm at the surface, there is a lot of turbidity below,” said William Clark, president of the Japan Society, a New York-based nonprofit organization.

Hashimoto, until a few months ago the tough-talking trade minister who helped engineer the U.S.-Japanese automobile agreement, has discovered the political benefits of standing up to the United States, unlike more conciliatory predecessors.

To a large degree, Clinton’s hands are tied: With the trade pacts and policies he pushed under attack, he must defend his efforts to open foreign markets for U.S. products, because that course also has left the United States open to increased competition from lower-wage countries such as Mexico and many Asian nations.

He must make the case to the public that he is driving a hard bargain with Japan and making real progress in resolving the two nations’ differences.

In the administration’s view, however, the trade frictions are milder than in the past, suggesting that “this will likely be one of the first meetings between a president of the United States and a Japanese prime minister that is not defined simply by the trade issue,” White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry said Thursday.

Hashimoto, known for his pugnacious demeanor and negotiating skill, has a simpler task: He requested the meeting, his first foreign trip as prime minister, to demonstrate the importance he attaches to U.S.-Japan relations.

Stanley Roth, director of research at the U.S. Institute of Peace and a former National Security Council staff expert on Asia, said what Hashimoto “is really bringing to the table is himself. The remarkable thing about this is he’s flying in from Japan for an extremely short meeting. The meeting is the message.”

Scheduled for one hour at the Sheraton Miramar Hotel, the encounter precedes a lengthier state visit Clinton will pay to Japan in April. But the route to that visit is seen as bumpy enough to require today’s agenda-setting meeting.

The deployment of U.S. troops in Japan, unquestioned by most established Japanese politicians since the end of World War II, has grown increasingly sensitive in Japanese politics since the rape of a 12-year-old girl in Okinawa on Sept. 4 and the arrest of three U.S. servicemen in the case.

And even as officials say trade disputes have eased, the remaining economic issues are as sticky as the troop deployment.

Despite reports that U.S. automobile companies are increasing their dealerships in Japan, skepticism has greeted the administration’s assertions that the agreement U.S. Trade Representative Mickey Kantor reached in June with Hashimoto will increase the sales of U.S. vehicles and parts in Japan.

Efforts to open up the Japanese market to U.S. superconductors, film and photographic paper are still controversial, and there are unresolved complaints that U.S. insurance companies are being kept out too. Tokyo is also balking at deregulating its economy.

Each issue, Kantor said, is likely to be raised by Clinton today.