Late next week, President George Bush will descend upon Tokyo for a once-postponed meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa. This time-to the annoyance of the Japanese government-he will be bringing along 21 American senior executives; including the CEOs of Detroit’s Big Three automakers. They are along to drive home a single point: the United States wants Japan to buy more American products. It is a message with newfound urgency for a president whose approval rating is slumping along with the U.S. economy.

But the trip carries political risks as well, because Bush and his entourage may not get what they’re after. Their goal of expanding U.S. exports to Japan faces a hardening perception among the Japanese that they have done all they can do to rectify the $41 billion trade imbalance between the two countries. Japan is already America’s second-largest export market (behind Canada), buying $48.6 billion worth of goods ranging from meat to wood products in 1990 (chart). And Japanese consumers are growing weary of American carping. That’s because MADE IN AMERICA is beginning to mean what MADE IN JAPAN meant to Americans in the 1950s: mediocre goods. The United States may produce great fast food, but for sophisticated manufactured goods such as automobiles, the Japanese can’t see what it has to offer. In fact, many Japanese believe the big trade gap reflects competitive realities. As right-wing legislator Shintaro Ishihara recently put it, “In economics, as in sports, you cannot make excuses, because the results show up in the scores.”

When Bush hears this argument, he’d best call time out. Trade is not that simple. And the perception that there’s nothing left to buy from the United States except Big Macs is, former U.S. trade negotiator Alan Wolff has said, “a bit of … inaccurate scapegoating.” The reality, adds Clyde Prestowitz Jr., president of the Economic Strategy Institute in Washington, is “a whole range of industrial products that America makes and sells quite well everywhere except Japan.”

Some of those are well known-like computer chips. But others are mundane. Ever heard of float glass? It is used in new construction, among other things. Float glass is also an industry in which U.S. firms are highly competitive worldwide. But the U.S. market share in Japan, the second-largest glass market in the world, is negligible.

The Japanese also say that U.S. companies don’t try hard enough. Historically, that has been true in industries like automobiles. But in others, such as telecommunications products, it is emphatically not true. Instead, U.S. companies have been victims of nontariff barriers, the focus of recent trade talks. They include the close supplier-customer relationships among Japanese companies, which are notoriously difficult for outsiders to penetrate. “The solution to U.S.-Japan trade friction,” says Wolff, “depends a great deal on a change in Japanese corporate behavior.”

Unfortunately, there is little chance of change in the industry that dominates the debate: autos and auto parts, which accounts for nearly three quarters of the trade deficit, Late last week, Japan’s automakers said they would hold a “summit” with their Big Three counterparts. And all of Japan’s major auto companies have already announced programs to buy more parts from U.S. firms, which means that the U.S. executives are likely to hear little except the old “try harder” lecture.

In the case of the car companies, that lecture maybe appropriate. Unlike European companies such as Volkswagen, the Big Three have never made much of an effort to sell in Japan. Now, the market is so competitive-and the Big Three’s image so tarnished-that it may be too late. The president will emphasize to his hosts that if he leaves Tokyo empty handed he will face intense election-year pressure to close the U.S. market to Japanese goods. Tokyo understands the equation, but may not be able to do anything about it. Last week, the Japanese Automobile Dealers Association issued a statement pleading with the government not to bend to American pressure. They say they don’t want merchandise on their lots that they can’t sell. For the Big Three, it will take years of effort-not one presidential trip-to overcome that trade barrier. What They Buy

The Japanese like U.S. consumer goods but shun big-ticket products like cars. Their top American imports:

Item U.S. Exports to Japan (Billions)

Logs and wood products $2.31 Computer parts and peripherals $2.25 Civilian aircraft $2.18 Fish $1.80 Art work and antiques $1.75 Corn $1.67 Meat $1.58 Aluminum $1.33 Computers $1.32 Tobacco products $1.32 SOURCE: U.S. DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE, 1990 DATA

Doing all they can to solve the trade gap? A Tokyo meat shopper (HASHIMOTO–SYGMA)