Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, June 29, 1995 TAG: 9506290092
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Hearst Newspapers
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
The deal ends a bitter 20-month standoff between the world's two economic giants but it represents a failure of the U.S. campaign to win Japan's agreement to specific numerical import targets.
Instead, U.S. negotiators settled for promises by Japanese auto companies - not the Japanese government - to buy more U.S.-made parts and build more cars at U.S. factories using American workers.
President Clinton said the White House expects Japan to increase the number of dealers selling non-Japanese cars by 200 next year and 1,000 during the next five.
He said, ``Japanese car makers will expand their production in the United States and buy more American parts both here and in Japan.
``These measurable plans should increase purchases of American car parts by almost $9 billion in three years, a 50 percent increase. Japan is going to make a half-million more new cars in the United States by 1998, an increase of 25 percent,'' he said.
``This agreement is specific. It is measurable. It will achieve real, concrete results,'' Clinton said, while acknowledging the deal is not legally binding - and remains ``completely voluntary.''
However, the office of U.S. Trade Representative Mickey Kantor acknowledged late Wednesday that the Geneva agreement does not commit the Japanese to any specific goals or figures. A spokesman said the numbers are U.S. estimates of Japanese automakers' promised goals.
In New York, Yoshi Tsurumi, an economics professor at Baruch College and an adviser to the Japanese government, accused Clinton of ``overselling this agreement in his news conference today as containing numerical targets when it, in fact, does not.''
The truce in the auto war still leaves unsettled two other big U.S.-Japan trade brawls, involving landing rights for U.S. cargo planes and Kodak's efforts to sell more film and photographic equipment in Japan.
The Japanese had derided the U.S. demands for purchasing guarantees as ``managed trade'' - akin to insisting the Japanese government order carmakers what to do.
Japan's trade minister Ryutaro Hashimoto, speaking at a news conference in Geneva, emphasized the deal is voluntary, legally nonbinding and that the Japanese government doesn't guarantee progress.
``Mr. Kantor had expressed his desire for numerical targets and on this point, there was no deal,'' Hashimoto said through a translator.
He characterized the pact, instead, as a ``gentlemen's agreement'' between the White House and Japanese automakers. He said the targets for expanded purchases and foreign dealerships in Japan are voluntary and any numbers being used by American officials to describe the deal ``are solely the U.S. government's.''
``I am pleased to note that numerical targets, which stood as the largest impediment to negotiations, is an issue that remains outside the scope [of the agreement], and we're able to maintain principles of free trade and free economy,'' he said.
But Hashimoto added, ``Still, the handshake commitment to market-opening agreed to here today is a big step for both sides and a result of good sense of both sides.''
Kantor acknowledged the lack in the agreement of ``government-to-government'' commitments for progress and peppered his statements to the press with assertions that the deal represented ``steps'' to progress and change - but did not, in themselves, bring about fundamental changes in Japan's markets.
Kantor acknowledged the agreement ``will not solve every problem'' but said it was ``a very big step towards our attempt to make sure that U.S. automakers and products made by U.S. workers have equal access to the Japanese market.''
by CNB