Word: pact
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Spin doctors in Washington and Tokyo to the contrary, the eleventh-hour deal is more of a truce than a real peace. To be sure, the pact left both sides momentarily ebullient. In Tokyo an official of the Ministry of International Trade and Industry reported after the deal was struck, "They're so happy that they're giddy over there" -- over there meaning in the office of Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama. And by transatlantic telephone Bill Clinton told U.S. Trade Representative Mickey Kantor, "Hey, Mick, congratulations. It sounds like you did great." It may not have been a cigar...
...auto pact kept the peace -- for now -- largely because, in the grand tradition of U.S.-Japanese trade settlements, it left Washington and Tokyo ample room to quarrel about just what it was they had agreed to. Clinton enthused, "This agreement is specific. It is measurable. It will achieve real, concrete results." In Tokyo, however, Hisashi Hosokawa, a hard-line miti official, insisted that "this agreement is a rejection of numerical targets" for Japanese purchases of American cars and parts. His boss, miti Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto, may have strengthened his already bright chances for becoming Japan's next Prime Minister...
...These are American estimates of what will happen if Japanese carmakers carry out pledges they supposedly made "voluntarily" and which are additionally subject to changing business conditions. But Hashimoto has made it clear that the Tokyo government does not guarantee that these-or any-targets will be reached. The pact provides for regular reviews to see how it is working out, yet prevents the U.S. from applying new sanctions if Japanese companies fall short of their promises...
...these reasons, the auto deal falls far short of being the "major step toward free trade throughout the world" that Clinton hailed. This week, even before the pact had been printed, word got out that Kantor's office will begin investigating a potentially explosive complaint by Eastman Kodak. The company charges that Fuji Photo Film and the Tokyo government illegally conspired to prevent Kodak from enlarging its 9% share of the market for camera film in Japan. The complaint -- involving some of the same Japanese business practices that the U.S. tried but failed to change in the auto deal...
...stalemate about broadcasters' rights and government censorship. We neglect discussion of moral responsibility by converting the public interest into an economic abstraction, and we use the First Amendment to stop debate rather than to enhance it, thus reducing our first freedom to the logical equivalent of a suicide pact...