Word: fukuda
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...package that Ushiba, a former ambassador to Washington, carried to the U.S. was heavily watered down from proposals that Premier Takeo Fukuda initially circulated privately. Those brought screams of anguish from Japanese farmers and industrialists, who are used to foreign competition only in overseas markets, not at home. Indeed, there is speculation in Japan that Fukuda deliberately presented to Washington what he knew would be an unacceptable package so that he could tell balky supporters, in effect: "See, I told you the Americans would...
Nonetheless, just as both sides in a labor negotiation can overplay their hands and wind up with a strike that nobody wanted, the Japanese-U.S. trade impasse is dangerous. Any effort by Fukuda to reduce Japanese import barriers further will meet fierce opposition from Japanese farmers, businessmen and workers. On the U.S. side, the Carter Administration must win some significant concessions from Japan soon, or Congress may enact highly restrictive limits on Japanese goods sold in the U.S. At week's end Ushiba was headed back to Japan for consultations, and officials in the Japanese government were mentioning...
...Richard Rivers, Strauss's general counsel, visited Tokyo. The Americans demanded that Japan step up its domestic economic growth to 8% a year or so, as an alternative to reliance on exports, and that it set a specific date for converting its trade surplus to a deficit. Fukuda responded with the Cabinet shakeup; his new ministers are already at work hammering out a program that Ushiba will present to Carter aides in Washington sometime this month...
Apart from U.S. pressure, Fukuda has other compelling reasons to push for faster domestic expansion rather than more exports. In the third quarter, Japanese production of goods and services, discounted for inflation, rose at an annual rate of only 4.4%. To a country used to much more rapid growth, that has been a shock. Japanese business firms are failing at the high rate of 1,500 a month, and unemployment, for all the vigor of the export industry, has edged up to 2.1% of the work force. In almost any other country, that would be considered low -but Japanese workers...
...more-yet the Bank of Japan has been selling yen heavily in an attempt to keep their value from rising further. The Japanese have made many promises in the past to let in more foreign goods, but have not taken enough action to please the U.S. and Europe. And Fukuda, despite his decisiveness in shaking up his Cabinet, is regarded as an extremely cautious politician. Says one disgruntled former Cabinet member: "Fukuda might have done away with our import duties on cars as a kind of symbolic gesture. Even if we removed the duties, no one would buy those...