Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, January 11, 1992 TAG: 9201130228
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
BUSH'S FLOP OF A FOREIGN TRIP
GEORGE BUSH has returned from Asia an enfeebled president, and we're not talking about the intestinal flu that caused his collapse at a state dinner in Japan. We're talking about his intestinal fortitude.Bush took what was to have been a diplomatic trip to firm up long-term strategic and political ties with Japan and other Pacific nations, and in view of falling political poll-ratings, he debased it into not even a trade mission but a crass campaign commercial blaming Japan for America's recession.
The president claimed his trip was in search of "jobs, jobs, jobs," but his own job is the one he seemed worried about. As it happens, his foreign tour will help neither America's jobless nor his own political prospects.
Recessionary America may be tempted by the politics of resentment and the excuses of trade-bashing. But what it really needs is leadership. That, along with rest, are things Bush also needed during his Asian junket. Instead, he ran scared and ragged.
Even the baggage that he carried with him - the group of 21 business executives, including heads of the major U.S. auto companies - ended up a burden. Predictably, they've returned denouncing the pledges the Japanese did make (to buy more American cars and $10 billion more in auto parts) as woefully inadequate.
Sure, Japan needs to be pressured to open its markets. But if you think Lee Iacocca cares a lot about selling more cars in Japan, think again. What he really wants is to reduce Japanese competition in America - never mind the so-called voluntary import curbs already in place for a decade (to give "breathing space," remember?).
In fact, if U.S. industry is to be competitive, it must make itself so. It can't be protected forever.
Robert Stempel, chairman of General Motors and one of Bush's fellow-travelers, rode a high horse in Tokyo, when he should have been embarrassed. He was paid $2.18 million last year. This year, he announced the closing of 21 plants and elimination of 74,000 jobs.
His counterparts in Japan don't do nearly as well - where their compensation is concerned. Honda paid its top 36 officers a total of $10.2 million last year. With Japanese taxes what they are, the Wall Street Journal estimates the average top-level Honda executive took home less than $150,000 last year.
Yet Honda Accords have been the best-selling car in America three years in a row. Road and Track magazine, in announcing the 10 best cars of 1991, chose nine that were Japanese and one that was German. Japanese unfairness to blame for the auto trade deficit? Come on.
The auto executives' cries are "nonsense," says W. Edwards Deming, the American consultant who helped the Japanese start focusing on quality in the 1950s while U.S. industry ignored him. A strong president would be telling Americans to listen to Deming, not to the noisy protectionists in Detroit and Congress.