Clinton Hits Road to Push Free Trade : NAFTA: He praises U.S. workers, warns of threat from Japan if pact is defeated. But pitch is upstaged by prospect of a Gore-Perot debate.

Mixing pep talk--”American workers are the most productive in the world”--with scare talk--if America doesn’t trade with Mexico, Japan will--President Clinton Thursday took his case for expanded trade on the road.

But his pitch to workers at Lexmark, a computer equipment firm that hopes to increase foreign sales if Congress approves the North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and Canada, was largely overshadowed by the sudden prospect of a debate on the pact between Vice President Al Gore and its leading opponent, Texas billionaire Ross Perot.

Gore, Clinton and Perot spent much of the day sparring long distance over prospects for a debate, with Administration officials challenging Perot to appear with Gore on CNN’s “Larry King Live” show while Perot challenged Clinton to show up at one of his rallies against the pact. Each side took turns accusing the other of being afraid to appear in a public forum.

By day’s end, the two sides remained publicly apart, but White House officials said that CNN had contacted Perot privately and hoped he would participate in a debate on the Larry King show, perhaps as early as Sunday.

“We’re anxious to do it,” White House Communications Director Mark Gearan said. “The more people hear and learn about NAFTA, the more it is to our advantage.”

Perot, on Capitol Hill for an opposition rally, denounced the pact with his customary verve. “Across America, this thing is dead on arrival,” he said. “It’s another stupid trade agreement rammed through by special interests.”

Clinton “won’t face the working person in this country in an open forum and talk about NAFTA,” Perot said--a line that White House aides gleefully repeated later in the day as Clinton finished his appearance before workers here.

Perot, however, is not the only person who has criticized Clinton for pursuing a Washington insider strategy on the trade agreement. Supporters of the accord also have grumbled that the President has been willing to lobby members of Congress vigorously but has seldom pushed the pact with gusto outside the capital.

White House officials had hoped to end that sort of criticism with Thursday’s town hall-style meeting with factory workers.

They had anticipated that there might be a memorable moment in which the President could defend the pact against the sort of charges levied by Perot. And indeed, Clinton urged the workers to come up with “hard questions” about the deal and “give ‘em to me with the bark off.”

But Clinton got neither bark nor bite from the polite crowd of about 900, who seemed largely to favor the agreement.

Lexmark now faces a 20% tariff against its exports to Mexico. Under the trade deal, that tariff would be eliminated, a change that the company hopes would greatly increase its sales.

Not surprisingly, the workers at Lexmark and other export-oriented businesses in the area have shown little of the fervor displayed by opponents of the pact in some parts of the country. That fact, plus the natural reluctance of people to seem rude to a President, left Clinton having to raise most of the hard questions himself.

“That one fellow talks about the giant sucking sound,” Clinton said, referring to Perot, who has led much of the opposition with his claims that the agreement would send hundreds of thousands of jobs to Mexico.

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“I know a little about this,” Clinton continued, talking about plants that left Arkansas when he was governor to move to Mexico. “I used to go stand at plants on the last day they were open and shake hands with people when they walked off the job for the last time.

“I want you to understand this very clearly from somebody who’s lived through this: This agreement will make that less likely, not more likely.”

The agreement, Clinton said, is a test of America’s willingness to compete and win in the global marketplace. “I don’t think we can afford to cut and run,” he said. “You cannot run and hide from the world we are living in. So we better just rear back and . . . compete.”

In case that argument is not a winning one, Clinton also is appealing increasingly to American worries about Japan to counter fears of Mexico. “If I were the finance minister of Japan on the day after Congress voted down the North American Free Trade Agreement, I’d get on an airplane and go to Mexico City and cut a deal,” he said. “The risk of that is very high.”

Several workers who said that they had been undecided told reporters that they found Clinton’s arguments persuasive. Clinton had “good command of the facts,” said David Murphy, a software engineer.

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Meanwhile on Capitol Hill, congressional Democrats spent much of the day examining something that may prove at least as influential as any arguments for or against the trade pact--poll numbers.

The House vote on the trade agreement is scheduled to come up in less than two weeks, and the key votes rest in the hands of some two dozen Democrats and a few Republicans who remain undecided. Most of those in the undecided camp lean philosophically toward approving the agreement but fear the political consequences of bucking strong and emotional opposition from organized labor, some environmentalists and Perot supporters.

In that context, polls have become a major weapon. Clinton sent his pollster, Stanley B. Greenberg, to meet with the House Democratic Caucus, primarily to discuss health care but also to try to reassure them about the trade pact. His words sparked a major argument.

According to sources present at the closed-door caucus meeting, Greenberg reported that a national survey he completed earlier this week found the public divided evenly on the agreement, with one-third supporting, one-third opposed and one-third unsure.

Greenberg “was met with some degree of incredulity, because people in the room have heard the strong feelings that people in their districts have on this issue,” said House Majority Whip David E. Bonior (D-Mich.), who is organizing opposition to the pact. “They’re fooling themselves in the White House.”

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Times staff writers Ronald Brownstein and Mark Bousian contributed to this story.