Bush Meets New Japanese Premier; Trade Issue Skirted

With two simple expressions--”comfortable” and “first name”--President Bush on Friday offered Japan’s new prime minister, Toshiki Kaifu, a gift of legitimacy likely to lift Kaifu’s status in the eyes of his countrymen and bolster his troubled Liberal Democratic Party.

Kaifu met Bush at the White House little more than three weeks after taking office amid political turmoil caused by scandals and electoral setbacks at home, and he got what he appeared to be after.

The two leaders largely skirted the thorny matters of trade friction, as expected, and Bush welcomed the prime minister by saying he immediately felt “comfortable” in his presence and proposed that they get to know each other on a “first-name basis.”

Such gestures of intimacy are loaded with meaning for Japanese leaders. Former Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone greatly enhanced his stature as a statesman by establishing a “Ron and Yasu” relationship with former President Ronald Reagan.

Kaifu, who appears to be crafting an image patterned after the popular Nakasone, rushed to the United States to prepare for the task of leading the ruling conservatives through a crucial election in the lower house of Parliament. The vote could come as early as this fall.

Despite the warm expressions of support, Kaifu received a warning from Bush and U.S. Secretary of State James A. Baker III. Unless Japan shows significant progress by next spring in wide-ranging economic and trade talks slated to begin on Monday, Kaifu was told, the Administration will face pressures from Congress that it may find difficult to resist.

The talks, conducted as part of a Structural Impediments Initiative between the U.S. and Japan, will allow each nation to point out problems in each other’s economy that contribute to an intractable $55-billion trade imbalance.

“The time has also come for Japan to become an import superpower,” Bush told Kaifu during a departure ceremony at the Rose Garden.

U.S. officials said that even though Kaifu made no commitments on trade and economic issues, he was “verbally cooperative,” pledging to take the new talks seriously and push for some sort of solution to the problems under consideration.

In turn, Kaifu declared his opposition to the threat of trade sanctions implicit in the so-called Super 301 trade negotiations scheduled to begin later this month in Hawaii. . The talks are named after a section of last year’s Omnibus Trade Act, which allows the President to retaliate against countries engaged in unfair trade practices.

The Administration has cited Japan under Section 301 for trade practices involving super-computers, satellites and forest products. Kaifu told Bush that sanctions would have an “intense impact” on the Japanese public, according to Foreign Ministry officials.

On the whole, the encounter was far from confrontational. The major theme of the summit, which brought Bush back to Washington for a day from his Maine vacation, was the pledge to continue close cooperation.

Kaifu became Japan’s prime minister after his two predecessors were forced to resign. Noboru Takeshita stepped down in connection with an influence-peddling scandal, and Sosuke Uno left office following revelations of a money-for-sex scandal and the ruling party’s humiliating defeat in the July 23 election for the upper house of Parliament.

For the first time since the Liberal Democratic Party took control of the government 34 years ago, it stands a chance of losing power to the Japan Socialist Party, which is headed by a charismatic woman, Takako Doi.

Domestic political uncertainty has effectively paralyzed the Liberal Democrats, a source close to the prime minister said, making it all but impossible for Japan’s leadership to make policy decisions about trade or international affairs until they regain the public’s mandate in the lower house election.

U.S. officials have done little to conceal their hopes that the Liberal Democratic Party will be able to win the election.

The Administration is known to be worried for two reasons about the possibility the Socialists might come to power.

One is that a Socialist-led government under Doi would call into question Japan’s defense and security ties with the United States and might prove to be more protectionist on trade issues than the Liberal Democrats

Another is the Administration’s desire for continuity. Although the Socialists have indicated they are prepared to move away from their policy of advocating unarmed neutrality and immediate abrogation of the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty, the Administration would prefer to avoid any unsettling change in the relationship between the United States and Japan.