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FROM
TRADE
WAR
TO
HOT
WAR?
by
Gene H. Hogberg
1
n January, the governments of Japan and
the United States reached a temporary
truce in what was building up to be the
most serious trade dispute since before the Sec–
ond World War. Special U.S. trade negotiator
Robert S. Strauss called the agreement a "far–
ther-reaching result than we had anticipated."
The Japanese agreed to significant concessions
demanded by the U.S., among them advance
tariff reductions on $2 billion of imports, re–
moval of a number of quota controls and steep
increases in U.S. sales to Japan of high quality
beef and citrus products.
The Japanese agreed to work toward reduc–
ing their nation's huge trade su rplus in 1978
through boosting domestic demand as well as
t:
by trying to bring Japan's external trade ac-
:
count into rough balance by fiscal 1979.
:
The agreement reached in Tokyo on January
The
PLAIN TRUTH April 1978
13- if its provisions can be attained- will have
gone a long way toward reducing immediate
U.S.-Japanese frictions which had already en–
tered the realm of acrimonious accusations. It
was very clear that the Japanese had thought
long and hard about negative American reac–
tions to the outcome of the first U.S.-Japanese
trade talks held only a month previously- nego–
tiations which Mr. Strauss termed "far short of
our expectation."
However, the breakthrough in Tokyo may
on ly prove to be a step-back-from-the-brink
situation. Mr. Strauss admits the agreement is
still one ofwords only; that it will be sorne time
yet before any tangible resu lts can be measured.
Not reassuring are the estimates by sorne ex–
perts that Japan may be unable to avoid sizable
surpluses for the next eight to nine years. And
elsewhere, all is not well for the free world's
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