Yeutter Wants Sanctions to Be Kept on Japan

NEW YORK —  U.S. Trade Representative Clayton Yeutter said Sunday that American firms were still having difficulty selling in Japan and that it would be premature to lift the remaining trade sanctions imposed earlier this year.

Asked on the ABC News program “Business World” if the sanctions imposed last March should be removed, Yeutter said the lack of success of American companies in penetrating Japanese markets thus far “simply does not justify it.”

“We believe that our companies on an open-market basis deserve a greater share of the Japanese market (and) they’re not getting it for whatever reason.

“And therefore we see no justification for lifting the sanctions in terms of access to Japan,” he said.

President Reagan earlier this year imposed $300 million in punitive tariffs against Japanese goods, but at the Venice economic summit in June lifted $51 million of that.

Watching Semiconductors

Yeutter said one area in which the Japanese appeared to have made progress was in sales to third countries of semiconductors, which Washington had charged were being dumped on the market.

“There’s been substantial improvement in that area,” Yeutter said. “We still think there is some dumping occurring in third country markets . . . and if that situation continues to improve--and it doesn’t have to improve very much more--then we would be in a position to lift the sanction.”

But, Yeutter added: “We will not do it until the statistical evidence is there.”