PACIFIC RIM TRADE : America : In Trade Debates, the Public Opts Out : Americans don’t often get excited about trade policy. Times of economic upheaval can stir their anger, though.

As diplomats hammered out final details of a new world trade agreement last December in Geneva, hundreds of journalists packed the hall but only a few were from the United States, the No. 1 trading nation and the one with the most at stake.

Completion of the new trade rules under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade sent 200,000 angry Indians into a violent protest in New Delhi. But in America, the trade plan drew scant public interest. Even last fall’s debate over the North American Free Trade Agreement, which strikes close to home, attracted only a few thousand people to occasional rallies staged by opponents. Pro-NAFTA demonstrations drew even fewer.

It would seem that most Americans view trade issues with monumental indifference. Not so. Trade is an issue that is deeply embedded in the nation’s political landscape. But it is one that remains latent for long periods, surfacing only sporadically, particularly during times of economic upheaval.

And even when it tops the national agenda, trade tends to defy traditional political analysis. In trade policy, like foreign policy, partisanship stops at the water’s edge.

“Trade is a bipartisan and nonpartisan issue. It is not ideological,” U.S. Trade Representative Mickey Kantor said in a speech last month. “It would be devastating for this country . . . to make this a partisan issue.”

Nevertheless, trade is an issue with a long and colorful history in the United States, and it involves an extensive web of political and economic connections that Presidents, lawmakers and negotiators ignore at their peril.

The stiff import tariffs that were applied, under heavy political pressure, at the start of the Great Depression are but one example. The difficulties faced by President Clinton last month as he decided to extend China’s most-favored-nation trading status, despite a lack of progress by Beijing in addressing human rights issues, are but the most recent.

Political leaders around the world typically express their devotion to the concept of free trade and endorse the idea of holding quotas, tariffs and other restrictions to an absolute minimum. But their allegiance to free trade in the abstract often falls by the wayside in the reality of day-to-day politics. For instance, said a congressional staffer actively involved in trade issues, the American people “look elsewhere for the culprit during a period of problems. The last place you will lay blame is yourself.”

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In such circumstances, he said, foreign trade offers a ready, if primarily symbolic, response for politicians. When the economy is troubled, they focus blame beyond the nation’s borders.

“It (trade) is an issue most other countries deal with on a continuing basis, with pretty much the same intensity,” the official said. But, he said, speaking on condition of anonymity, in the United States it is a subject more often below the surface of public debate, “so it is primed (only) by the political pump.”

Thus, when the Clinton Administration felt a need to “stand up for the American worker,” Japan’s trade policies provided a convenient target in mid-1993 and early 1994. But, he added, “as the economy has gotten better, there is a waning of interest” in trade relations with Tokyo.

A Los Angeles Times poll in April found only five out of 1,682 people questioned who volunteered that foreign trade was the most important problem facing the nation.

On a day-to-day basis, trade issues may be higher on the political agenda in Europe or Japan than they are in the United States, and therefore may appear open to more routine handling. In fact, they are no less volatile overseas.

It was the political clout of French farmers--and sympathetic urban voters devoted to the romantic image, if not the reality, of French rural life--that for years blocked approval of the agricultural provisions in the recent GATT round. In Japan, Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa left office in April amid criticism of his failure to strike a new trade agreement with the United States. It wasn’t the sole factor in his departure, but it played a contributing role.

In the United States, partisan divisions over trade issues are rare. For instance, Clinton found support among Republicans and Democrats alike as he fought successfully for congressional approval of NAFTA last fall, affirming American acceptance of more open trade among the United States, Mexico and Canada.

Do such alliances mean a trade negotiator can ignore congressional crosswinds and the interests of constituencies in writing a trade agreement? Of course not, said one former negotiator, adding: “I was as attentive as I could conceivably be.”

Some issues are less likely to attract the political spotlight. Intellectual property rights--the protection, for example, of U.S. patents guarding biotechnology products--”never resonate with anyone other than a small community” in Congress, said one trade expert.

But when trade disputes are linked to volatile public issues--such as human rights in China, the opening of Japanese markets to U.S. products and Clinton’s willingness to open diplomatic and trade relations with Vietnam--they “clearly have grass-roots resonance, grass-roots understanding and grass-roots impact,” the trade specialist said.

At the heart of the Administration’s decisions on these difficult issues, said Claude Barfield, a trade expert at the American Enterprise Institute, is this question: “How can we do the right thing without taking a lot of flak?”

“Producers and workers threatened by imports tend to be concentrated, organized and ready and able to press their interests in the political arena. Those who benefit from trade are diffuse, and their stake in any particular trade matter is usually small,” I. M. Destler wrote in “American Trade Politics,” a highly regarded study first published in 1983 and revised in 1992.

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Last year’s NAFTA debate was a remarkable exception. Supporters who stressed the potential long-range gains from increased exports to Mexico were able to prevail over those concerned about the more immediate impact of Mexican products competing with higher-cost goods made in U.S. factories.

There usually is an imbalance, Destler wrote, between those riding an economic wave and those being swamped by it. “Firms with expanding markets and ample profits tend to concentrate on business; their worry is that government may get in their way by placing constraints on their flexibility and their profits,” he pointed out. “It is the embattled losers in trade who go into politics to seek trade protection.”

So, he said, quoting a former trade official, it is an “unnatural act” for a politician to vote to lower trade barriers, particularly in the face of well-organized interests seeking quotas on imports or higher tariffs to protect a local industry.

While the economy provided the text for the 1992 presidential campaign, trade--and the role of lower trade barriers--offered an important subtext. Throughout the campaign, then-President George Bush tried to use his own support for NAFTA, which removes trade barriers among the United States, Mexico and Canada, as a weapon against challenger Clinton. Clinton waited until October, one month before the election, to tackle the sensitive issue, and then offered only his conditional support.

Since the election, Clinton aides have noted that it would have been much easier for their candidate to gain support in America’s industrial heartland, where NAFTA was unpopular, had he openly opposed the agreement.

Which brings us back to Geneva, and the negotiations to rewrite the rules that have governed international trade since the end of World War II.

In the closing days of the GATT talks, negotiators were meeting nearly 24 hours a day. Even so, a senior aide in the U.S. delegation managed to find time each day to make his way to a meeting room at the Intercontinental Hotel. There, he sat with a team of lobbyists representing such diverse segments of the U.S. economy as agriculture, entertainment, textiles, steel and pharmaceuticals, delivering a classified briefing on the latest developments in the negotiations.

There was nothing nefarious about it. Nor, officials said, were the lobbyists given insider information. Rather, the briefers were simply recognizing an unavoidable fact of life in the world of trade and politics:

When the world trade pact was completed, the lobbyists would return to Washington. Without their support, the Administration would stand little chance of winning congressional approval of the pact.