3 Targeted Nations Rap Trade Warning : Japan, Brazil and India Lash at U.S. Retaliation Threat

GENEVA — Japan, Brazil and India lashed out at the United States today for branding them as unfair trading nations and said Washington’s threats to retaliate against them could harm world commerce.

The U.S. stand was also criticized by Canada, the European Community, Mexico, Argentina and Nordic countries at a council meeting of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.

The United States last month cited Brazil, India and Japan as countries indulging in unfair trading practices. The so-called “Super 301” section of the 1988 U.S. Trade Act allows for 18 months of negotiations with targeted countries to get them to mend their ways or face retaliation.

Japanese Ambassador Yoshio Hatano said the United States was neglecting the principle of the rule of law, a basis of the GATT system.

‘Not Acceptable’

“To be judge, jury and executioner at the same time is not acceptable,” he said.

The United States cited Japan for closed markets in supercomputers, satellites and forestry products. It listed India for regulations that it said discouraged foreign investment and insurance, and it named Brazil for overly strict import-licensing requirements.

Brazil and India told today’s council meeting that U.S. threats of retaliation risked undermining GATT’s 105-nation Uruguay Round of talks to free the flow of international trade.

“While the multilateral process is in progress in the Uruguay Round, one of the participants has decided to secure its aims bilaterally, not by persuasion or negotiation but through the use of economic sanctions,” Indian Trade Ambassador Bal Krishan Zutshi said.

Zutshi said there was a strong possibility that any retaliatory action taken by the United States under Super 301 would be discriminatory and lacking authorization from the Geneva-based GATT, which sets the rules for four-fifths of world trade.

The GATT council should send a clear message to Washington that “implementation of 301 provisions will emasculate the multilateral trading system and bring the process for preserving and strengthening it to a halt,” Zutshi said.

Washington is using “a kind of process under duress in which a country would be pressured not to exchange trade concessions for other trade concessions but to make concessions in order to avoid punishment,” said Rubens Ricupero of Brazil.

Ricupero said invocation of Super 301 had ruined the good will fostered at Uruguay Round negotiations last April. That meeting cleared the way for an important new phase of the four-year talks, scheduled to be completed by the end of next year.