Donald Trump Laces Into Japan With a Trade Tirade From the ’80s
By JONATHAN SOBLE and KEITH BRADSHER

TOKYO — Donald J. Trump has often aimed his raucous brand of disparagement at foreign countries during his presidential run. There is China, “ripping off” the United States on trade and stealing its jobs. And Mexico, closing its eyes to a flood of migrants and drugs across the border.

But his preoccupation with Japan is perhaps more unusual, if not anachronistic.

Mr. Trump chastised Japan last week in a Republican candidates’ debate, naming it along with China and Mexico as countries where “we are getting absolutely crushed on trade.” He has previously accused Japan of manipulating its currency to achieve an unfair economic advantage, and of exploiting its military alliance with the United States to protect itself at little risk and cost.

His complaints are reminiscent of another era, when Japan’s economy was booming and its companies were buying trophy American assets like movie studios and Rockefeller Center. Since the 1990s, though, Japan’s growth has been mostly flat, and trade friction much more subdued, even as the United States continues to run large trade deficits with Japan.

Whereas Japanese officials once feared so-called Japan-bashing by Americans, today they are more likely to lament “Japan-passing,” a shift in attention to places viewed as more dynamic, like China.

“Trump’s comments on Japan remind me of the period from the late 1970s to the mid-1990s, when Japan was considered a serious rival to American economic pre-eminence,” said Glen S. Fukushima, a former United States trade official who is now a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a liberal policy group. “It’s interesting that despite the two-decade stagnation of the Japanese economy, Trump is now reviving the idea of Japan as an economic rival robbing America of jobs.”

Or, as Robert E. Kelly, an East Asia specialist at Pusan National University in South Korea, put it on Twitter during the Republican debate: “Japan, Japan, Japan again. Trump is living in the Michael Crichton ’80s.” (Mr. Crichton’s best-selling novel “Rising Sun,” published in 1992, depicted a Japan that waged ruthless economic war against the United States.)

Mr. Trump’s ascendance has begun to cause serious unease in Japan. Even if his run ends short of the White House, the worry is that an election dominated by such talk could leave the United States more closed to trade and less willing to defend its allies.

“My friends in the Foreign Ministry are in a state of panic,” said Kiichi Fujiwara, an expert on international politics at the University of Tokyo. “This is the first time in a long time that we’ve seen straightforward protectionism from an American presidential candidate.”

Major Japanese newspapers published critical editorials a day after Mr. Trump’s sweeping victories in the Super Tuesday primaries last week.

“If there is a big shake-up in American politics, there is a danger that Japan could become an outlet for popular dissatisfaction with the spread of inequality and other issues,” The Nikkei financial daily said.

One concern is that Mr. Trump’s rivals will shift to more isolationist positions to counter him. Last month, Hillary Clinton, the Democratic front-runner, who is also contending with skepticism on trade from her party rival, Bernie Sanders, criticized China and Japan in an opinion piece published in American regional newspapers.

“China, Japan and other Asian economies kept their goods artificially cheap for years by holding down the value of their currencies,” she wrote, adding that the United States should consider “effective new remedies, such as duties or tariffs.”

Mrs. Clinton has also backed away from her support of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a 12-nation trade deal that includes Japan and is awaiting ratification by the participating countries. She helped promote the deal as secretary of state.

“We’re already drawing up new laws and regulations, but it could all unravel,” said a senior Japanese official involved in the deal, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the discussions are confidential. “Our best hope is to ratify it quickly, along with other countries, to put pressure on the U.S. to follow through.”

As he does with China, Mr. Trump accuses Japan of taking American jobs.

After his victories on Super Tuesday, he called out Komatsu, a Japanese manufacturer of construction machinery, saying the weak yen gave it an unfair advantage over its American rival Caterpillar. He pledged to use equipment from Caterpillar and John Deere, another American manufacturer, to build his promised wall on the border with Mexico to keep out illegal immigrants.

Globalization has stirred the public anxiety over jobs that Mr. Trump is seizing on. Japan exports more than twice as much to the United States as it buys.

But globalization has also blurred lines between foreign and domestic companies in ways not accounted for in Mr. Trump’s criticisms.

In addition to its factories in Japan, Komatsu has plants overseas, including three in the United States — though it imports key components, like hydraulic pumps and motors, from Japan, where it also keeps its high-paying design and engineering operations. Caterpillar and John Deere are much the same, manufacturing at home and overseas but keeping engineering mostly in the United States.

Still, Mr. Trump’s attacks could play well in places like Michigan and Ohio, important primary states.

Their economies have suffered as manufacturing has moved abroad. Carmakers and unions, still influential forces in those states, have been vocal critics of the way Japan’s government has let the yen depreciate.

“The last thing I want to do is come off as defending Donald Trump, but there is an issue with the yen,” said an official at the United Automobile Workers union, which traditionally supports Democrats.

Japan’s currency has fallen as much as 40 percent against the dollar since 2012, though it is up somewhat this year. The decline has made Japanese carmakers like Toyota and Honda more profitable by increasing the value of their overseas sales.

Japanese officials say the yen’s fall is simply a side effect of domestic policies aimed at ending persistent deflation, not a deliberate effort to gain an edge in trade. Yet Prime Minister Shinzo Abe campaigned openly in 2012 for weakening the yen to aid Japanese manufacturers.

“Just because the Japanese government no longer repeats that, doesn’t mean the goal has changed,” said Stephen E. Biegun, Ford’s vice president for international governmental affairs.

No one can accuse Mr. Trump of coming to the issue late. He has been saying many of the same things for decades.

“They come over here, they sell their cars, their VCRs. They knock the hell out of our companies,” he told Oprah Winfrey in 1988. In a Playboy interview in 1990, he said: “First they take all our money with their consumer goods, then they put it back in buying all of Manhattan.”

On military matters, Mr. Trump has expressed dissatisfaction with the United States’ decades-old alliance with Japan. It obliges the United States to go to Japan’s aid if Japan is attacked. But Japan is not obliged to do the same, because of its war-renouncing Constitution, which was imposed by occupying American forces after World War II.

Mr. Abe says he, too, is unhappy with the “unbalanced” alliance. He has been trying to carve out a more active role for Japan’s military, despite opposition from constitutional experts and much of the Japanese public.

If the United States turned toward isolationism, the Japanese prime minister would be emboldened. But it would be a delicate balancing act. An American disengagement from Asia in the face of an increasingly assertive China and North Korea would be a harrowing situation for Japan’s leaders.

“The U.S. has been saying for some time that Japan needs to bear more of the burden for regional stability,” said Jiro Aichi, a member of Parliament from Mr. Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party. “Trump is saying it in a more extreme way, but it’s a fact that Japan has to do more.”

川普反日數十年 日本超怕他當選

紐約時報報導，日本對美國共和黨總統參選人川普民調領先深感不安。雖然川普將中國大陸、墨西哥和日本並列為操縱匯率、讓美國失去工作機會的國家，但他特別批評日本，說日本利用與美國的軍事同盟關係自保，不用花錢又沒風險。日本擔心，就算川普最後未能當選，其他參選人也會在選戰中跟進提出類似主張，讓美國偏向貿易保護主義，且不太願意捍衛日本。

東京大學國際政治專家藤原歸一說：「我在外務省的朋友都很恐慌，這是很久以來我們第一次看到美國總統參選人大剌剌主張貿易保護主義。」

川普在上周「超級星期二」初選獲勝後，日本大報一面倒批評川普現象。財經報紙「日本經濟新聞」就在社論中說：「如果美國政壇真的風雲變色，美國人對貧富差距惡化的不滿恐怕都會發洩在日本身上。」

川普對日本的類似批評從1980年代就開始，當時是日本經濟全盛時期，隱然挑戰美國經濟霸權，日資曾在美國大肆蒐購各種資產，引發美國民間疑慮。1988年川普曾在電視脫口秀主持人歐普拉的節目上罵日本「跑來美國賣車、賣錄影機，打垮我們的公司」。1990年他接受「花花公子」雜誌專訪時又說：「日本人賺飽我們的錢，買下整個曼哈坦。」

不過，1990年代以來日本泡沫經濟破滅，日本經濟力下滑，美日之間的貿易摩擦早已逐漸沉寂。川普近來卻再度挑起反日論調，讓日本朝野同感驚懼。上周他在電視轉播的候選人辯論場合，痛批日本、大陸和墨西哥打垮美國貿易，還加碼指控日本操縱匯率，利用美日同盟自衛卻不肯多出點錢。在競選場子，他直接點名日本建築機械製造商「小松」等公司因日圓貶值享有優勢，對美國同業「開拓重工」不公平。

僅管不少評論家嘲笑川普還活在80年代，才會重提這些反日老調，但日本怕的是其他總統參選人跟進仿效走向貿易保護主義，將不利仰賴出口的日本。民主黨的希拉蕊．柯林頓上月就投書到美國多家地方報紙，批評「中國、日本和亞洲其他經濟體刻意壓低幣值，讓產品維持低價好多年」，美國應該考慮「有效的新方法，例如關稅」。

希拉蕊曾在國務卿任內推動「跨太平洋夥伴協定」（TPP），參選後卻說不支持TPP。日本參與TPP談判的一名高官說：「我們已制定新的法律和法規，但這一切可能都會付諸流水，希望日本和其他成員國國會趕快批准TPP，讓美國感受到壓力，非批准不可。」

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/08/business/international/unease-after-trump-depicts-tokyo-as-an-economic-rival.html

2016-03-09．聯合報．A13．國際．編譯李京倫