TOKYO – To more than ten thousand kilometers away from Italy, Scalfaro explains to the second world economic power the advantages of free trade and the risks of neoprotectionism.
The small and big Japanese “steam” masters listen to it with scrupulous attention. The International Monetary Fund indicators project zero growth for 1998, even if the front pages of the newspapers cry out a net doubling of trade surplus, due to the blocking of domestic consumption and the consequent collapse of foreign imports. The other side of the crisis. The Italian president is addressing this entrepreneurial world, to this “rising sun” until five years ago to conquer the global market. To talk about the mutual benefits that will give the single currency of Europe, and together the Japanese reform and deregulation program. Scalfaro prides himself on how Italy and its “great vitality” has “surprised foreign observers many times”. Until “correcting his imbalances with great sacrifice, putting order in the accounts in his own home”. Talk here to a country that does not have a good relationship with public spending. And the lesson of the guest at the Japanese Confindustria seems, at times, even excessive revenge after so many criticisms of Italy. To the ruling class of Tokyo who silently admires Prodi and the Italian renaissance, Scalfaro sends a message that sounds passionate invitation to free trade, without diffidence, and at the same time protection of national interests. Yes, because the country with the highest per capita income of the G7 (more than $ 37,000 per year, twice the price of Italy) and the highest savings, has reduced its imports from Italy by almost 3 per cent and exports increased by 25, favored by the low listing of the yen. Italy still maintains an active balance with Japan, but has fallen from 5134 billion to 3570. It is also in this context that the Italian president ‘s exhortation to the “advantages of free trade” falls on the eve of the fiftieth anniversary GATT. Problems and challenges, Scalfaro recommends, “have a global dimension, and require, indeed impose, the overcoming of narrow national spheres”. Attention, he tells Japanese industrialists tempted by self-defense isolation: “There is still the fear that the process of liberalization may undergo an interruption or, worse, an inversion of tendency”. And the two governments address the invitation to “flee, indeed fight the protectionist shortcuts that arise in moments of difficulty with an unexpected strength”.