The Joke May Be on L.A.

If the ill-advised “Buy American” charter amendment, placed Tuesday by the Los Angeles City Council on the June 2 ballot, is approved by voters, Los Angeles will run the risk of becoming the world’s laughingstock.

Exaggeration? Maybe a hair. But no more hyperbolic than the exaggerated reaction that brought us the “Buy American” baloney to begin with. The proposed amendment by Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky sprang from justified anger and resentment over the mishandling of a major contract by the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission. The commission awarded a $128-million contract to a Japanese-owned firm without enough public discussion and explanation of why a foreign firm, which submitted a higher bid than an American-owned company, should have received the contract in the middle of a U.S. recession. Public outcry, some of it legitimate and unfortunately some of it undisguised Japan-bashing, drove the transportation commission to cancel the contract.

It was in this politically charged atmosphere that Yaroslavsky came up with the “Buy American” charter amendment, which would give California and Los Angeles County firms preference in bidding on city contracts and establish a minimum domestic content requirement for city purchases.

The proposed amendment indicates no awareness that we all live in an inexorably global economy. The folks of Greece, N.Y., learned that the hard way. They rejected an excavator from Japanese-owned Komatsu American Industrial Corp. in favor of a machine made by U.S. firm John Deere--only to find out that the Komatsu machine was made in America and the John Deere machine in Japan!

No wonder one economist warned that such an amendment would become a “scavenger hunt from hell” for city purchasers seeking to find products that were “American” enough to buy. To use an Americanism to describe the proposed charter amendment: This dog won’t hunt.