At the end of last month the United States named Japan, along with India and Brazil, as serious fair-trade violators subject to 100 percent retaliatory duties.

The United States has threatened retaliatory duties on British gin, French brandy and white wines and Dutch cheeses, among other products.

Prospects for a Uruguay Round global trade agreement hinge for now on the success of President Bush's threat of retaliatory duties against European white wine.

Mr. Chretien says he does not want the United States to forget that it promised to work toward a code governing subsidies to avoid misunderstandings and retaliatory duties in the future.

Some of those restrictions have been lifted, but $165 million of Japanese products, including laptop computers and power hand tools, are still assessed a 100 percent retaliatory duty when imported into the United States.

President Reagan imposed retaliatory duties of 200 percent today on European imports, in an action that United States officials say will probably cause Americans to pay more for gin, brandy, cheese and some white wine.

Two of the bigger wine stories this year were the phylloxera epidemic in California and the threatened imposition by the United States Government of huge retaliatory duties on white wine from the European Community.

Lamont campaigned as a traditional Liberal free trader, although he was challenged on his previous support for a form of retaliatory duty to protect West Indian sugar producers from unfair foreign competition, which policy he now renounced.

If China and the United States have not reached agreement by Jan. 16 on measures to protect American copyrights and other intellectual property, then Washington is prepared to levy retaliatory duties against a variety of Chinese exports.

As the Friday deadline neared for the American imposition of stiff retaliatory duties on imports of Japanese semiconductor goods, American officials were ruling out a compromise of the sort that ended the countries' previous conflicts over trade.

Protection of Copyrights In another issue involving relations with the West, the Chinese Government warned today that it is considering imposing retaliatory duties totaling $1.2 billion against American products, if the United States imposes duties against Chinese goods.

Under a section of American trade law known as Super 301, the three countries could face retaliatory duties of 100 percent on some of their exports to the United States if they do not agree within 18 months to drop trade barriers that Washington considers unfair.

The warning, disclosed by the deputy United States trade representative, S. Linn Williams, at a Congressional forum, steps up trade pressure on the Japanese less than two weeks after Japan was named, along with India and Brazil, as serious fair-trade violators subject to 100 percent retaliatory duties.