OTHER NEWS - March 28, 1995

U.S. to Step Up Pace in Japan Auto Talks: Senior U.S. trade officials said market barriers are keeping Japan’s auto and car parts imports unacceptably low, and they vowed to intensify negotiations on access to Japan’s markets. Japanese officials, however, expressed dismay over what they called new U.S. demands, and they said that in some areas, the gaps between the two nations have widened. “The Japanese are importing only 2.4% of their auto parts, and that just doesn’t compare to what you see in the U.S. and Europe,” Ira Shapiro, general counsel for the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, told a news conference. Shapiro joined U.S. Undersecretary of Commerce Jeffrey Garten in Tokyo for a day of talks on the issue of trade in cars and car parts, a sector that accounts for about two-thirds of the U.S. trade deficit with Japan.