Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 28, 1990 TAG: 9003280205
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The New York Times
DATELINE: TOKYO LENGTH: Medium
To start with, he should strictly limit every American to just a couple of credit cards.
Then he should build a network of bullet trains across America, impose a stiff gasoline tax and get rid of low-interest car loans, all to get gas-guzzlers off the road.
And he should ban the tax write-off for many types of home mortgages because it subsidizes consumption, not savings.
That is a sampling of 80 very concrete ideas the Japanese government presented the Bush administration several weeks ago, part of the broad critiques Japan and the United States are making of each other's economies.
The list was leaked to Japanese newspapers over the weekend and confirmed by officials on both sides Monday.
"Is this a recipe for political suicide?" a senior Japanese official said after he was asked whether Japan actually expected the president - or other American politicians - to embrace reforms that would likely cost most American voters thousands of dollars.
"Maybe it is. But you should see America's ideas for Japan."
There are 240, including a suggestion that the leaders of Japan's biggest and most secretive business conglomerates make public the minutes of their monthly meetings.
For months, both countries have broadly criticized each other's economies.
But the two recently exchanged lists make up the most specific plans either side has ever put together to close Japan's trade surpluses and open its markets, or to end America's budget deficits and restore U.S. industrial competitiveness.
From the start, both sides say, the plan was to put together the best suggestions they could come up with, paying no heed to political realities on either side.
"We don't expect every suggestion to be adopted," said a senior official of the American Embassy in Tokyo, "and neither do they."
The result is what Makoto Kuroda, a former high official of Japan's Ministry of International Trade and Industry, calls "a bunch of very crazy ideas."
"But as long as you gave us your crazy ideas," Kuroda told an American, "we thought we would give you a few of ours."
Some Japanese suggestions are familiar to anyone who has followed the often-repetitive trade dialogue of the countries.
For example, the Japanese said American companies should report earnings, and pay dividends, only twice a year, rather than quarterly.
That is the system Japan uses, and the proposal grows from the ritual argument in Japan that American companies are too shortsighted.
Some American ideas are also familiar.
A draft of the U.S. proposals calls for raising Japan's public spending to about 10 percent of gross national product from the current 6 percent.
It wants to "abolish the distinction between areas for urban development" and areas where such development is regulated, like farmlands.
The U.S. called for a repeal of the law that makes it difficult to establish large department stores, American or Japanese, anywhere it might hurt small shops.
by CNB