CALIFORNIA ELECTIONS U.S. SENATE : Barbie Doll Becomes a Pawn in the Campaign

Barbie and Ken and their doll-world friends usually are at the beach, or the prom, or a wedding--places where skies are blue, dresses are pink and fairy tales come true in the minds of their little-girl owners. On Monday, Barbie became a political pawn.

Barbie was caught between Lt. Gov. Leo T. McCarthy of San Francisco and Rep. Mel Levine of Los Angeles in their struggle for the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate seat now held by Democrat Alan Cranston, who is retiring.

The problem, McCarthy says, is that the all-America Barbie is manufactured in places like Kuala Lumpur and Penang in Malaysia and Guandong province in southern China.

Levine is sponsoring legislation that would eliminate the existing 12% import duty on dolls of 33 centimeters or less in length, or about 13 inches. The new heading of No. 9902.95.03 within the Harmonized Tariff Schedule of the United States would apply to “unstuffed” dolls “whether or not dressed,” in the jargon of the U.S. International Trade Commission.

The definition fits Barbie, which grosses hundreds of millions of dollars a year for Mattel Toys of El Segundo. The tariff category apparently applies also to some of a new line of dolls that Mattel is making for the Walt Disney Co.

McCarthy complained that the legislation would cost the U.S. Treasury $53 million a year in tariff income. Second, he said during a breakfast meeting with reporters, “It would cost American workers thousands of jobs. . . . It’s insane to promote exporting American jobs when 9 million people are unemployed in this country.”

However, spokeswomen for the Levine campaign and Mattel said the proposed duty-free provision would not affect any American jobs because the dolls already are made overseas, and have been since the early 1980s.

The bill is a matter of equity, said Hope Warschaw of the Levine campaign and Donna Gibbs, director of media relations for Mattel.

Warschaw declined to say whether Mattel or other toy makers specifically asked Levine to introduce the bill. “It was brought to his attention that there was an inequity in the way these particular toys were assessed duty,” she said.

Warschaw said that current law imposes no duty on unstuffed dolls that are made in developing countries or in Israel. The Levine bill would merely even the playing field, she argued. There are no tariffs on stuffed dolls, she added.

Gibbs said the measure is needed to keep Mattel products competitive with duty-free imports. The average duty on all products is 4.6%, she said. For imported autos, it is less than 3%, she said.

Major portions of Mattel operations remain in the United States, employing about 1,200 people. “We really don’t believe this will hurt any domestic industry,” she said.

McCarthy distributed a list of $50,000 in campaign contributions that Levine had received from Disney officials and toy industry figures in the last four years, but there were none from Mattel.

Included in the McCarthy press kit was a copy of a magazine article alleging that prisoners in Chinese slave labor camps are forced to make toys for export to the United States. But the kit also included copies of pages from Mattel’s annual report noting that dolls coming from Guangdong province are made in plants owned and operated by Mattel.

Levine introduced the bill more than a year ago to apply only for calendar year 1992. It is just now being readied for a House committee vote, Warschaw said.

For the record, not all versions of Barbie fit the image of an airhead California girl whose instinct is to go shopping when the going gets tough. Mattel produced a line of professional Barbie dolls in the 1970s that included Barbie the Summit Diplomat, who might have some thoughts about the Harmonized Tariff Schedule.

The campaign of Rep. Barbara Boxer of Marin County, the third candidate in the contest, had no comment.