PERSPECTIVE ON U.S.-JAPAN TRADE : Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained : Bush’s problem is that he’s no Reagan; he treats our No. 1 adversary with kid gloves, Americans take the punch.

We are at a pivot point in history. With communism defeated, and the Soviet Union reduced to the status of artifact, America’s new challenge is to define our national interest in a global economy. The meeting in Tokyo between President Bush and Japan’s prime minister was the first superpower summit of the new world order, and both nations have much to learn about their new roles.

Contrary to much popular opinion, the President should be applauded for putting the full force of his foreign policy behind America’s economic interests. He was right to take American executives with him, and to press for the same treatment for American goods in the Japanese market that Japanese products enjoy in our market. For the first time in the history of Bush’s foreign-policy travel, the economic specialists joined the diplomatic and national-security team in the first-class compartment on Air Force One. The President now seems to recognize--at least in some limited sense--that America cannot succeed as a world power if it doesn’t have a powerful economy. That is a real breakthrough.

So why the broad perception that the President’s trip failed? The explanations are legion, but here is a paradoxical, even heretical theory: George Bush should have acted more like Ronald Reagan.

Former President Reagan had a long history as a belligerent anti-communist. He never acquiesced in the face of Soviet arms-control violations, nor was he shy about criticizing the breadth of their buildup. Before every nuclear arms-control negotiation, he persuaded Congress to vote support for a weapons system, even as a “chip” to be later bargained away. He traveled with a team of experts who shared his commitment to getting Moscow to abide by international norms. Most of all, he was our leading symbol and most articulate advocate of American exceptionalism; with the help of Mikhail Gorbachev and a declining Soviet economy, he rallied the American spirit in the final stages of the Cold War.

By contrast, President Bush went to Tokyo as a recent convert to “fair trade.” His is the history of a doctrinaire free-trader. The Bush Administration has never monitored existing trade agreements that Japan routinely violates, such as past accords on semiconductors and auto parts; indeed, it equates criticism of Japanese protectionism with efforts to erect barriers in America to Japan’s goods.

To make matters worse, the Bush Administration went to the talks in a posture of unilateral disarmament: It went on record opposing efforts to renew the barrier-busting Super 301 provision of our trade law, and against legislation to correct the cartel practices of Japanese businesses. And many in the Administration and among its cohorts in Congress and think tanks adopt a blame-America-first attitude toward American workmanship and products.

Given these facts, it would have been remarkable if the Japanese had taken the President’s first show of force on trade seriously. The Tokyo agreements are largely symbolic, temporary and unenforceable, and will make no long-term difference in the dramatically unbalanced trade relationship we have with Japan. Our $40-billion-plus trade gap will not close, and the 800,000 American jobs that a truly free market could produce remain lost.

There are fundamental differences between Japan and the old Soviet Union. Japan is our ally, and our relationship with Japan must now be the closest and most cooperative bilateral relationship we have. But the unfortunate outcome of the President’s trip will be intensified unless we begin treating Japan as it is, not as we wish it to be.

We get into trouble when we try to assign a single cause for our economic problems. The recession we are experiencing has multiple causes, including many made in the U.S.A. But if we want to succeed in the new world order, reforming Japanese trade practices is a good place to begin.

Japan’s market is more closed to global imports than virtually any other on the face of the Earth. Japan has a $100-billion annual trade surplus with its international trading partners. The issue is not tariffs, it is the invisible barriers that are woven through the core of Japan’s economy and culture.

Confronting Japanese trade-law violations is essential. Throughout the history of U.S.-Japan trade talks, we have never gained a concession from Japan for free, and we are never able to raise the permanent elimination of barriers without the threat of retaliation or an agenda for obtaining measurable results.

We must pressure Japan to change the behavior of its private-sector firms, many of which, as a matter of custom, will deal only with other Japanese companies, and force them to open their procurement relationships to American and other foreign suppliers. Similarly, the Bush Administration must aggressively obtain and monitor Japanese commitments to cut through cumbersome and expensive procedures such as automobile certification, which adds as much as $12,000 to the sticker price of an American car sold in Japan, making such products as the Jeep Cherokee virtually impossible to sell.

We should adopt legislation that will force the Japanese to live up to agreements they have signed and will sign in the future. We must be prepared to erect reciprocal trade barriers in America against their exports unless they reduce existing barriers to foreign goods in their own markets.

America must do many things to reclaim our economic vitality and independence. Executive compensation levels must be tied to corporate performance. Companies operating in the industrialized countries against which we compete have advantages our firms don’t have--better programs for education and training, nationalized systems of health care and higher levels of public investment in areas ranging from infrastructure to research and development.

A true commitment to American economic reform must include broad-based investments in the skills of our workers and renewal of the social contract that makes our economic competitors so powerful. The President is promising an “economic action plan” in his State of the Union address; these are the kinds of proposals he must make not simply to get us out of the recession or past the next election, but to help America regain its economic edge.

Finally, we must also better understand the pains and the aspirations of the American people as we enter this era of global change. Last week, in the living room of a home in Sterling Heights, Mich., I asked about a dozen auto workers how this recession was different from the one that hit Detroit pretty hard in 1982. They said that even in the midst of layoffs and slumping sales, they had confidence a decade ago that things would get better. Today, they simply don’t believe that the industry’s health will be revived or that the jobs will come back. Their spirits have all but collapsed, and they found no comfort in the free-trade ideologues’ recent chatter about shoddy American work habits.

At the same time, many of their brethren in the auto industry are now doing zero-defect work, they are taking pride in the excellence of their products and they are inspired to greater heights by the competition Japan is providing in the market. What many of these workers are missing in terms of presidential leadership, they told me, is the sense of confidence and belief in the American spirit that President Reagan articulated. President Bush just doesn’t seem to understand his role in the new world order he helped name.