AFTERMATH OF THE BUSH TRIP : The Muddled Origin of Vehicles Mocks Trade Policy Barbs

The U.S. and Japanese nationalism that held sway at this week’s trade talks in Tokyo shifted here Thursday as politicians, Japanese auto executives and American workers traded barbs in the hothouse atmosphere surrounding the Detroit auto show.

But as they apportioned blame for the plight of the U.S. auto industry and the national economy, the rich mix of automobiles on display mocked the whole notion of political boundaries.

Union electrician Jerry Skinner paused while he wired a section of Toyota’s huge 50-car display on the vast floor of the downtown convention center and grumbled about what the Japanese had done to the industrial Midwest by clobbering the Detroit-based auto industry.

“I’m no fan of these people,” Skinner said.

But the gleaming Camry a few feet away was built in Kentucky, Skinner acknowledged, and his own union helped build Toyota’s factory. And the nearby Geo Storm, sold by the same General Motors whose cars his father used to build, was made by Isuzu workers in Japan.

The new Mazda MX6 was built in suburban Detroit, the Toyota Corolla was from California, the 212-m.p.h. Jaguar XJ220 was built in England by Ford, the new Nissan Quest was engineered in Detroit and built at a Ford plant near Cleveland, the Buick Century came from Mexico, the Mitsubishi Eclipse was built in Illinois, the Plymouth Voyager and Suzuki Sidekick were assembled in Canada, the Honda Accord came from Ohio, and on and on.

The hopelessly muddled heritage of the cars and trucks--and even the people who sell them--reflects, some say, how the politics of trade lags behind the commercial realities of what has long been the industry most prized by the world’s governments.

Now that 40% of the Japanese-brand vehicles bought by Americans are built in the United States, with General Motors the No. 4 importer ahead of Mazda and Mitsubishi, and with Honda the No. 2 exporter of cars from the U.S. to Japan, anyone trying to manage auto trade between the two countries is liable to step on the wrong toes.

Rep. Richard Gephardt (D-Mo.), the House majority leader, would like to try, and he passed through Detroit on Thursday to tour some factories and explain to automotive audiences that he would do it on this nation’s behalf: “Do you think we can give up the auto industry? If you do, we have nothing to talk about.”

But the gentlemanly atmosphere of the auto bazaar itself belies such nationalism. Floor space is based on market share, and the language is the dollar, the yen and the mark. Run by dealers who sell whatever will legally make money, the Motor City’s auto show reflects a market where 13% of the cars sold are made by Japanese firms--double the share of a decade earlier.

This, combined with an infusion of Japanese auto production, research and development activity that has generated more than 20,000 jobs here, gives the Japanese plenty of visibility in Detroit, and they weren’t shrinking from it this week.

Toyota’s lavish dinner party for local dealers, the news media and others at the Rattlesnake Club, a downtown eatery, was a social highlight of the week. And its display of cars and trucks is among the auto show’s biggest.

Meanwhile, as many auto executives were ducking questions about the heated trade talks going on concurrently in Japan, Toyota’s top U.S. executive, Robert McCurry, ignored his own cars during the company’s allotted time on stage Thursday and instead blasted the U.S. auto industry for whining.

McCurry and many others illustrate how even the players in today’s auto industry have worked both sides of the road. A one-time football star at Michigan State and 28-year veteran of Chrysler, he has overseen Toyota’s phenomenal U.S. success in the 1980s from a home base in Torrance.

With McCurry at the head table for the Toyota dinner was his old chum, Martin L. McInerney, prominent longtime Cadillac, Lincoln-Mercury and Chrysler-Plymouth dealer in Detroit. McInerney, a neighbor of retired General Motors boss Roger B. Smith and personal friend of Chrysler head Lee A. Iacocca, recently added Toyota to his dealership empire.

And here from the Cypress offices of Mitsubishi Motor Sales of American Inc. was its chief operating officer, Richard Recchia, another longtime Chrysler sales executive who grew up and went to college in Detroit. Over lunch in an old Italian restaurant near his boyhood home, he pondered the possibility that the Mitsubishi cars built in Normal, Ill., are more “domestic” than the Dodge Caravans made in Windsor, Ontario.

Then, apparently weary of the week’s political rhetoric from here and abroad, he said he intends to start his next speech by asking, “Did you know that the auto trade deficit with Japan is the leading cause of cancer?”