The Toughest Trader of Them All : In Showdowns With the Japanese and Pushy Congressmen, Carla Hills Is All Business

THE SENATE FINANCE Committee is about 20 minutes into another of its frequent oversight hearings on how tough the Bush Administration intends to be on foreign trade, and Republican Sen. Robert Packwood of Oregon, a boyish-looking man with an occasionally petulant demeanor, is bearing down on the morning’s witness. Sounding almost like a prosecutor, Packwood implies that the White House has abandoned its once-tough position calling on Europe to phase out the subsidies it gives to farmers. Packwood demands to know, chapter and verse, exactly how the Administration plans to negotiate the issue.

Like any good negotiator or poker player, the new U.S. Trade Representative, Carla A. Hills, is not eager to lay out her strategy before she gets to the table. It seems understandable that she might like to lean forward to meet Packwood directly, then blurt out something like, “Aw, c’mon, senator--get off my case,”--which the posturing Sen. Packwood might well deserve. But Hills is new to the job, and most novices don’t take on senior senators such as Packwood so soon. So it surprises everyone when she does . “You know, it does not help the negotiations for me to sit here and say what our specific strategy is,” Hills points out quietly, but firmly. After all, she adds: “This is a negotiation .”

The riposte is so effective that committee chairman Lloyd Bentsen of Texas, an experienced politician who knows when to call a halt to things, does so judiciously. “Hang tough, Madam!” he admonishes her, in an unconscious mixture of machismo and Southern courtliness. Then, with a side glance at Packwood, he breaks into a sheepish smile: “--and I think you will !” he says, setting off appreciative chuckles in the audience.

For Carla Anderson Hills, winning over another lawmaker this morning is a small step toward meeting what may be her most formidable challenge: surviving and surmounting the many forces trying to shape U.S. trade policy. In her seven months as United States Trade Representative, Hills has combined the steely self-confidence she showed Packwood with a meticulous attention to detail and held her own against antagonists ranging from Congress to the Japanese. A former Los Angeles socialite, captain of the Stanford women’s tennis team, assistant U.S. attorney in Los Angeles, head of the Justice Department’s civil division and third woman in history to serve as a member of a President’s Cabinet--as head of Housing and Urban Development under Ford--Hills, at 55, effectively is the nation’s trade minister. She’s responsible for formulating the Administration’s trade policy and for negotiating with foreign countries.

It’s not glamorous, and the details may be wearying, but Hills’ work has a major effect on industries and jobs across the country. The more Hills can open markets for U.S. goods and reduce unfair competition resulting from government subsidies to foreign industries, the more jobs she will create or save at home, and the lower prices will be here and abroad. European countries, for example, are underwriting their farmers directly and that, the United States contends, encourages them to produce more and enables them to sell their huge surpluses at discounts that underprice American goods.

To be successful, Hills must satisfy both a President who wants to follow a trade policy that is pragmatic and open, and the more-militant members of Congress. In addition, Hills’ agency--USTR, as it’s known--must serve as “an honest broker” among the other parties that historically have a say in setting the nation’s trade policy: The treasury, state and commerce departments, Office of Management and Budget, labor and private industry.

Although most voters are oblivious to the trade issue, it has become a virtual obsession in Washington--particularly among Democrats, who see protectionism as a sure-fire vote-getter. Largely on momentum generated on Capitol Hill, the lawmakers passed a massive trade bill last year that imposed such heavy requirements on Hills’ office that they left her little room to maneuver in dealing with other countries. This year, they are nearly rabid about the need to “get tough” with Japan, and they are pressuring Hills to do it.

In all these arenas, Hills has proven that she can win her adversaries’ respect. Although she came into the job with only a minimal exposure to trade issues, Hills has been relatively successful in finding the hearts, if not the minds, of lawmakers. She testified on Capitol Hill no fewer than 12 times during her first few months in office--unusual for a Cabinet member even at the start of an Administration. Bowing to Congress’ wishes, she has publicly cited Japan for alleged unfair trading practices. She has made lawmakers feel that she is on their side in internal debates over trade policy. And, perhaps above all, her businesslike, almost-courtroom manner has given her an assertive image that sells well on Capitol Hill.

A grateful Congress, nearly beside itself after eight years of laissez-faire ideology under the Reagan Administration, has exuded praise. “If you were a movie, you would be a must-see,” a clearly chastened Packwood gushed at Hills at a recent Finance Committee hearing.

At the same time, Hills has earned the grudging respect of her counterparts from other countries, most of whom are career politicians and bureaucrats who are quick to spot--and overwhelm--an amateur. Sir Roy Denman, who until July was ambassador to Washington from the Brussels-based European Community, extols her as “a class act.”

Even the Japanese--usually sparing in their praise of American officials and uncomfortable around high-ranking women--concede that she is an able negotiator. “She is very well-grounded and tough, besides,” says a senior Japanese official who has sparred with her in private talks. “She is not easy to deal with, but we think she will do a good job.”

Still, not everyone appreciates her style. Not prone to Washington-style small talk--and formal almost to a fault in many of her personal dealings--Hills has earned a reputation as a stickler that takes some old Washington hands aback. And some hard-liners complain that she has given too much away in negotiations.

Hills-watchers trace much of her style--and her seeming success so far--to two early loves and influences: the law and the competitive strategies of tennis. A lawyer’s lawyer--she worked her way through Yale Law School--she researches every issue meticulously. She thrives on detail. And she negotiates as if she were representing a client--no compromising, at least not until the very end. “Carla Hills wants to be the best,” says William D. Eberle, a former USTR who has come to know the negotiator well as her husband’s sometime business partner. Adds a USTR associate: “The key to Carla Hills is that she really, really hates to lose.”

HILLS’ OFFICE, in a corner of the Winder Building, a one-time Civil War telegraph office across the street from the Old Executive Office Building, is a reflection of the reserve and control her adversaries have come to know well. The decor is prim and orderly--a carefully arranged set of government-issue furniture, almost bereft of personal eccentricities. Knickknack cabinets at the back have only a smattering of personal memorabilia--conspicuously among them a 35mm candid of Hills standing next to Bush. Even the occasional stacks of papers are tidy, lawyerly. A vase full of flowers stands, properly, at a corner of her desk.

Her appearance telegraphs power--and a no-nonsense style. Always impeccably coiffed in a utilitarian bob--the easier to touch up before an official dinner party--Hills favors the kind of expensive, severely tailored suits and off-white barrister blouses that career women began using in the early 1970s to signal their status as professionals. Occasionally, there’s some relief--a scalloped edge on a jacket or a bolder-than-usual pattern--but the overall effect is always sober.

To many, Hills represents the quintessential Ice Lady. Cold, intense, serious, driven--these descriptions of Carla Hills often come up in conversations with lawmakers, other trade ministers, even her close associates. Although she can be charming in private, when she’s on the job, she rarely laughs or shows more than a flash of humor. She always seems to have her guard up. Light banter with lawmakers is not her forte. And virtually everything she says is very studied, very controlled. Very legalistic, Washington says.

Hills’ first few days in office were an eye-popper for USTR’s staff. At her request, her new chief of staff, Gary Edson--dubbed “Mr. Format” by USTR associates--issued a nine-page memorandum on office procedures that jolted the previously informal agency. Where lower-level officials used to scrawl a phrase or two on the margin of a letter to communicate with Hills’ predecessor, Clayton K. Yeutter, there now were to be separate categories of memos, each identified with a different colored felt-tip marker--red for decision memos, appointments, recommendations and speeches; green for briefing papers, and blue for “information” memos. Telephone messages were to have varying colored sheets stapled to them, depending on the category of caller.

Even now, staffers say, Hills kicks memos back if they aren’t correctly color coded. She also keeps her own appointments calendar--a rarity in secretary-conscious Washington, and not always a convenience for underlings. “If you want to change even a short conference, you have to talk to her directly,” one pained senior staffer says.

Most demanding, however, is Hills’ penchant (again, litigation-lawyer-style) for thick briefing papers that detail every conceivable issue and aspect of a problem, presumably no matter how trivial. “The sheer volume of that stuff going into the front office has brought about a panic atmosphere,” says one senior staffer who has been frustrated by it all. “She wants to know all the nitty-gritty details--biographies of individuals who will be at the negotiating table and all that.” Adds another, ruefully: “She blows up when she thinks she is not being adequately informed.”

Hills’ short fuse already is a legend. Agency staffers have complained that she chews out subordinates for what seem to be minor lapses, bearing down almost as though she were still a prosecutor. Unable to suffer others’ shortcomings graciously, Hills also is quick to lash out at what she perceives as mistakes--both in print and in personal relations. “Once she gets you on the run, she backs you into a corner,” a former staffer says.

She has been frugal with praise. “Clayton (Yeutter) used to send notes that some staffers considered patronizing, but those days look good now,” a USTR official says.

As a result, morale at the agency plummeted during Hills’ first days in office. Discouraged as well by Congress’ refusal to approve a pay raise for federal workers, many USTR staffers quickly began looking for new jobs. In one instance, two embarrassed USTR officials ran into each other at the same job interview. “The resumes were flying,” an associate recalls.

Asked during an interview for this article about her reputation as a stickler, she is unapologetic. “I would say I try to get as good a performance out of the team as I can,” she says matter-of-factly. “If that means sending back a paper and asking for greater detail, yes, I do do that.”

IN EVERY OFFICIAL SETTING, Hills has a practiced formality and competitiveness that may stem from her childhood days. Family members say she had to fight to prove to her father that she could hack it in what was then clearly a man’s game. Carl H. Anderson, a transplanted northwest Missouri farm boy who moved to Los Angeles after World War II and made a modest fortune in the building-supply business, was a hard-driving man. His children lacked for nothing. Young Carla Helen Anderson grew up in a world of private schools, horses and frequent parties, and she received a good education. The family home, in Beverly Hills, was on the same street as the one used in the movie “Sunset Boulevard.” The Andersons spent their summers on their ranch in Burbank.

Family members say Hills always had two desires: to go to school in the East and to become a lawyer. Yale Law School was her choice. But her father also believed that women would only quit careers and squander education to raise families. Besides, once they married they couldn’t carry on the family name. After Carla enrolled in Yale--she’d earned an undergraduate degree in history/economics from Stanford--her father essentially “cut her off,” her husband, Roderick M. Hills, recalls. Earning her way by working summer jobs, she graduated in 1958, ranking 20th in a class of 167--one of only 11 women in the group.

It was at Stanford that she met Rod Hills, then a third-year law student from Seattle. A gregarious, easygoing sort of man, Rod is her personality opposite. Acquaintances say Rod Hills serves as an occasional adviser. He also frequently loses to her in tennis. The two married in September, 1958, just after she took--and passed--the California bar exam. Despite high marks all around, her first real challenge was getting a job. She had made the rounds of private firms, but in those days, most law firms weren’t ready to accept women. All she could turn up was a “woman’s job”--doing wills and probate at a firm that counted her father as a major client--so she applied for a federal post, as an assistant U.S. attorney for civil cases.

For all her experiences, Hills is not flamboyantly feminist. Her aides seek to discourage interviewers from asking about her personal life or about how it feels to be one of only two women in the Cabinet. (The other, Elizabeth Dole, is Bush’s Secretary of Labor.) And she studiously avoids using feminist jargon. On one level, she almost dismisses the whole issue of discrimination: “Well, you couldn’t be my age and not have felt that there was some,” she says with a shrug, “but I think I’ve really been pretty lucky. For one thing, I’m not looking for the problem. And that’s always been the case.”

Although her three top deputies all are men, she has larded the middle level of USTR with women--her agency’s chief lobbyist, her private sector liaison officer and her press secretary all are women. During National Secretaries Week last spring, Hills called all USTR’s secretaries--all women--together for a “woman-to-woman” talk about what the agency does and why it is important.

Hills has racked up all her achievements seemingly without seriously taxing her family--a rarity in Washington for senior officials of either sex. Acquaintances recall that during Hills’ days as HUD secretary, when demands at the office were particularly heavy, Hills still found time to attend her youngsters’ school functions. “Her housekeeper would drive the kids, and Carla often would arrive late--but she’d get there,” recalls a parent of one of the Hills children’s classmates.

Three out of the four Hills children are in--or heading toward--careers in law. Laura, 28, a Stanford graduate, is an attorney at Patton, Boggs, & Blow, a prestigious Washington law firm. Prevented by her mother’s position from handling trade cases, she has settled for contracts on international transactions. Rick (Roderick Jr.), 24, a first-year law student at Yale, is interning at another Washington firm. And Megan, 23, who just finished her master’s degree at Georgetown University, is entering Stanford University Law School. Another daughter, Alison, 18, is a sophomore at Stanford. The Hills children’s interest in law “is just individual” and had relatively little to do with the fact that their parents both are lawyers, Laura Hills says. “Of course, they were both an inspiration,” she adds.

The Hillses still live in the spacious, boxy home in Washington’s fashionable Spring Valley area that they have occupied since her days at HUD. A California-modern standout in an otherwise-traditional neighborhood of stately brick colonials, it sports a swimming pool and--of course--a tennis court. Friends say Hills still plays a solid--and aggressive--game (her partners have included the likes of Jack Valenti, president of the Washington-based Motion Picture Assn. of America, and Tom Brokaw of NBC Nightly News, an old friend who describes her game as “very strong but graceful.”)

Carla Hills repeatedly has been mentioned as a possible nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court, but she has neither lobbied for consideration nor admitted publicly to hoping for it. “She’s too private a person” even to discuss it, Rod Hills concedes.

CARLA HILLS’ PREOCCUPATION WITH detail--and her ability to master it--had served her well by the time she moved into the trade negotiator’s office. When Gerald Ford nominated her to become Secretary of Housing and Urban Development in 1975, critics groused that she didn’t know the subject matter, had no experience in the housing field and wasn’t particularly well-known in Washington. HUD then--as now--was rife with scandal, mismanagement and plummeting morale. But the new secretary quickly showed that she could be a capable--and efficient--administrator. Within weeks, she had cleaned up most of the mess, tightened up HUD procedures and breathed new life into the low- and moderate-income housing programs that most analysts had thought would never get off the ground.

Hills also began her current tenure amid a flurry of controversy. As well as facing critics who believed that she knew little about the complexities of trade, she was barraged with queries about the conflicts of interest that might arise because both she and her husband had recently served as lawyers and lobbyists for foreign firms.

The Hillses had registered in 1985 as foreign agents for Daewoo Industrial Ltd., a South Korean company, and had worked on behalf of some Canadian firms. And both were on a spate of corporate boards. At that time, Rod Hills was running a consulting business that dealt largely with foreign companies. He had been chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission in the Ford Administration.

But Hills disposed of the conflict-of-interest issue in a direct--and unusually self-sacrificing--fashion: She promised the Senate Finance Committee that both she and her husband would sever all business ties and investments “that could conceivably present a conflict” with the decisions she would have to make as trade chief, and that she would abstain from taking part in decisions affecting such issues whenever they came up. In an unprecedented move, her husband pledged not to become involved in anything that either her own agency or the independent Office of Government Ethics believed might pose a problem.

Job secured, Hills was practically on her own to learn the ropes. Bureaucratic delays meant that the positions of her three top deputies went unfilled until June. And there was heavy turnover in the department after the Reagan era, so few old hands remained.

The pressures on Hills, and her workload, were almost unprecedented. The United States and Europe were locked in a fight over how quickly Europe would phase out its farm subsidies. The impasse had stalled a much more important discussion called the Uruguay Round (named because it was launched in Punta del Este, Uruguay)--a 106-country negotiation aimed at reducing agricultural subsidies and writing new rules to cover trade in services, investment and intellectual property (patents, trademarks and copyrights). That the talks are the centerpiece of the Administration’s trade strategy only heightened the sense of urgency.

At the same time, the United States and the European Community (the Common Market’s latest mutation) were on the brink of a mini-trade war because the Europeans refused to accept America’s hormone-treated beef. Hills’ department had to prepare dozens of new reports, almost immediately, that were required by a massive 1,000-page trade bill that Congress had passed the year before. And, under a provision known as Super 301, she had to come up with a plan for publicly targeting other countries’ “unfair” trade practices: She’d have to stir up a hornet’s nest by virtually accusing other governments of bad faith even before they began to negotiate. Worse yet, the new Administration had not even hammered out its overall approach on trade policy. How, Washington wondered, would Hills cope with it all?

Hills went to work. February, when her office was under especially heavy pressure, may have been the cruelest month: It was, she recalls with a hint of a smile, “consumed with the Uruguay Round stalemate . . . beef hormones . . . escalating passions.”

But she broke the farm-subsidy impasse with Europe. She headed off a potential trade war over Brussels’ decision to ban beef from hormone-treated cattle. She won new concessions from Japan on its barriers to U.S. telecommunications products. She limited a push by the steel industry to extend current import quotas another four or five years. And she helped force the Bush Administration to renegotiate an eleventh-hour Reagan-era deal with the Japanese over joint development of an advanced fighter aircraft, the FSX; trade hawks had contended that the United States had been bested in the original accord. Some critics complained that she “gave away the store” on the hormones issue by relegating the fight to a low-profile committee rather than fighting to the finish. Nevertheless, Hills’ action averted a transatlantic food fight that might have damaged broader trade-liberalization talks.

In her initial dealings with her overseas counterparts, Hills was stern, and sometimes didactic. A senior Japanese official who has dealt with Hills from the start recalls that at their get-acquainted meeting, “she was almost like a headmistress. She listened to what I had to say, then delivered a lecture.”

Her aggressiveness--and her newness to the field--made Hills seem a hard-liner, at least at the outset. Under continual pressure from Congress, she vowed publicly--and privately--to enforce the new trade law strictly. She complained frequently about foreigners’ unfair trade practices, bluntly warning Japan even before she was appointed that “we have to have results” if Tokyo wanted to head off trade retaliation by the United States. And she frequently allied herself with Commerce Secretary Robert A. Mosbacher, whose industry-led pronouncements on trade policy--calling for more activist government programs to help industry become more competitive--have played well among senators and some manufacturers, but have sent shudders through economists and diplomats.

But two events since then have brought on a greening--or at least a broadening--of Hills’ approach. The first, in late March, was the interagency process--a long, drawn-out procedure in which the Cabinet-level Economic Policy Council reviews major trade and budget decisions. The council includes the secretaries of state, treasury, commerce, defense, agriculture, USTR, the White House National Security Council and the Office of Management and Budget, and not all agree with the more hawkish views of Congress and Mosbacher.

For the first time, Hills came into contact with top officials who were openly appalled at her hard-line approach. It was her first exposure to the internal tug of war that invariably accompanies trade policy making. In their discussions of how to handle the Super 301 requirements, State pointed out that Japan--the country that hard-liners most wanted to punish for trade imbalances--was America’s most important ally in the Pacific, and a major financial power. Treasury expressed concern that a crackdown might send the dollar plunging and discourage Japanese investors. And Michael J. Boskin, another Californian who is chairman of President Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers, warned publicly that Japan’s possible retaliation to such tough action could bring on a global recession. Boskin--naively, some thought--recommended flouting Congress and simply refusing to name any target countries at all.

A second shocker came in May, at a meeting of trade ministers from the 24 largest industrialized countries, members of the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a prelude to the annual seven-nation economic summit. For two solid days, trade minister after trade minister pelted the United States for using Super 301 to prosecute U.S. trade complaints against other countries instead of using the multi-nation process it had helped set up. Nations “should not be judge and jury” over their own trade disputes, complained Europe’s spokesman, Frans Andriessen of the Netherlands. Hills eventually ended up assuaging the group, reminding them--in the technically precise terms they’d come to expect from her (though some thought this argument disingenuous)--that so far, Washington had merely listed its negotiating priorities, and hadn’t yet retaliated. But it was a learning experience, nevertheless. “I think it opened her eyes a bit,” an associate says.

Hills’ decision on Super 301 in late April reflects her evolution. By any measure, it was deftly crafted. In a minimalist action designed to obtain maximum impact, Hills named only three countries--Japan, Brazil and India. She also named six specific trade practices.

But the package had something for everybody. By hitting Japan, she appeased Congress and its anti-Japan kick. Adding Brazil and India, both of which had been stumbling blocks in the Uruguay Round negotiations, enabled her to say she was not “singling out” Japan, thus saving some face for a valuable U.S. ally. And the trade practices for which she cited Tokyo were old and relatively easy for the two governments to resolve--Japan’s refusal to buy U.S.-made satellites and supercomputers, and its overly restrictive standards on foreign-made plywood. Negotiations with the Japanese already are under way.

Admittedly, not all the cleverness on the Super 301 package was Hills’ own doing. In fact, she argued for a much stricter-sounding list than the White House ultimately adopted, and scaled it back steadily in the face of increasing objections from the State Department and other agencies.

Through all that, however, Hills insists that she still is a free-trader at heart. Just as she opposes foreigners’ policies that give their industries an advantage over United States producers, she opposes protectionist U.S. laws as well. She made no secret of her distaste for extending the current U.S. quotas on steel and sugar imports. And, since the OECD meeting in late May, she has taken a softer tone in talking about Super 301. “I did not draft it. I did not sponsor it. I only swore to uphold it,” she told trade ministers at the Paris meeting.

Hills may be the most powerful USTR since the Carter Administration. Yeutter was constrained by then-Treasury Secretary James A. Baker III, who kept a tight grip on trade policy in his role as head of the Economic Policy Council. But the current Treasury Secretary, Nicholas F. Brady, has left her freer rein.

The USTR’s job has proved “more complex” than she had expected, she concedes. “It’s broader than, say, housing.” As for dealing with U.S. trading partners, she says, she has learned that “their situation is just as complicated as ours. It is just as difficult (for them) to get a consensus (in their governments) as it is to get two congressional committees (here) to see things the same way.”

THERE’S MORE TO THE JOB, Hills is learning, than the give and take among agencies and nations. There’s also selling her positions to the public, dealing with the media, winning allies in the Administration and contending with the occasional scandal. Perhaps her most conspicuous flaw has been her difficulty in articulating her agency’s doings to the general public.

P.R.-bungling cost the Administration much of the effect it could have had domestically in announcing its decisions on the Super 301 cases. There was much political mileage to be gotten from this “talking tough” to Japan. But Hills announced the final decisions in a chaotic fashion, delaying scheduled briefings repeatedly after discovering that the State Department had not notified the foreign countries involved. Even some Hill staffers who had been instrumental in writing the law were confused about what the Administration actually had done in the 301 cases. Uncomfortable around the media even now, Hills first refused through a spokesman to be interviewed for this article, then, later, changed her mind.

Her relationship to Bush--closer than that of some Cabinet officers, not as chummy as others--is decidedly an asset. An early adviser and occasional tennis partner of the President’s over the years--both, after all, are Yale graduates--Hills keeps a poster-sized photograph on the wall of a conference room adjoining her office showing Bush giving Hills a crowbar at her swearing-in ceremony. At the bottom, printed with a felt-tip pen is a brief legend: “To Carla--I know you’ll use this with finesse and strength. George.” Bush publicly stops to chat with Hills and invites her in to talk. Word of that kind of access gets around quickly in the nation’s capital.

But Hills still is regarded as “combative” by other top Administration policy makers--too quick to “escalate an argument,” one insider says. And Administration hallways are filled with stories of how a mid-level official who failed to do Hills’ bidding on some relatively minor project finds himself chewed out the next day by his Cabinet secretary, who in turn has been badgered by a follow-up call from Hills.

One senior official in another agency responded to a call from USTR recently with the bluntly worded query: “Is this conversation safe, or is it likely to result in another Hills-to-the-secretary phone call?”

The trade representative faced unexpected difficulties July 17 when a House subcommittee probing scandals at HUD during the Reagan Administration grilled her for several hours over some work she did as a lawyer in 1984 on behalf of DRG Funding Corp., a Washington-based firm that is now under investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation for alleged underwriting abuses in a federal housing program.

Hills told the subcommittee that she met with then-HUD Secretary Samuel Pierce four times that year to lobby the secretary to ease restrictions on a project, but she said she “never had a hint of fraud or intentional wrongdoing” on DRG’s part from HUD officials. And she expressed no surprise that Pierce would have met with her.

“I certainly would have seen DRG had I been secretary” then, she said. The panel apparently won’t pursue the case. “Even bad companies are entitled to a lawyer,” Hills notes unapologetically.

HOW WELL HILLS WILL DO FROM here is an open question. With seven months’ experience under her belt, Hills clearly is becoming more comfortable with trade issues. On a recent swing through the Hague for a trade ministers’ meeting, she was relaxed--and effective, foreign trade officials say--in brainstorming sessions with the Europeans and Japanese. Hills-watchers say the arrival of her top deputies--who are experienced and competent enough to assume a large portion of the burden--may give the new USTR more time to develop a long-term strategy for the Administration.

That would help her answer what is perhaps the most frequently voiced complaint about her performance: that, although she has succeeded so far in resolving short-term problems, she has no long-term strategic agenda. “Where is American trade policy headed?” former Nixon-Ford trade strategist Harald Malmgren asks, almost rhetorically. By necessity, perhaps, Hills’ agenda so far has been determined mostly by previously scheduled events, such as congressionally set deadlines for launching unfair-trading-practices cases or a conference on the Uruguay Round. What was on the plate before is what has been on the plate so far.

The spate of Super 301 cases now behind her, Hills’ most important task is to shepherd the Uruguay Round talks to their scheduled close in late 1990--a Gargantuan task involving some 18 international negotiating committees, hundreds of arcane nuts-and-bolts trade provisions and strong leadership on Hills’ part both abroad and at home. The stakes are high. Malmgren says how she performs during those talks could affect U.S. trade policy for the next two decades. If the Uruguay Round collapses, protectionism--and worldwide economic and political frictions--almost certainly will result.

Hills agrees. For the longer-term, Hills still envisions a widening of trade opportunities--in the Pacific Rim, in Mexico, in Europe and with “an enormous opening of Japan.” But she concedes that “all those feed off finishing the Uruguay Round,” which she calls “our top priority to implement our trade strategy.” Managing the broad-based trade negotiations is “an enormous challenge,” she acknowledges. “It’s an enormous job in communications.” She also is concerned about the increasing trends of economic nationalism that have begun making their way through the country, intensifying pressures to close U.S. markets and bar foreign investors here. “There is a great deal of misinformation” about the effects of barring investment in the United States, she says. For now at least, Hills remains a bit of an unknown, not giving away her likely strategy, either for her own job as USTR or for the talks with the Europeans and Japanese. If she succeeds, she doubtless will be happy to explain what she did, in retrospect, in a very measured--and legalistic--fashion. And if she fails? Well, Sen. Packwood, don’t even ask.