U.S.-JAPAN TRADE ACCORD / THE DEAL-MAKERS : Kantor: Tenacious, Careful, a Born Negotiator
U.S. Trade Representative Mickey Kantor is often described as a natural negotiator, wearing down his opposite number with a mastery of detail and a refusal to quit.
But whether that skill and tenacity resulted in a U.S. victory--thereby enhancing Kantor’s reputation as a negotiator--remains to be seen. The jury is still out on whether Kantor’s accord to boost U.S. access to the Japanese auto market will result in real gains for U.S. auto makers.
Some U.S. critics suggested that Kantor may have given in too easily, accepting a deal that does not include commitments to specific sales figures or market shares--and thus might result in disappointment for U.S. interests.
Nonetheless, Kantor continues to win praise for his tenacity--a trait that enabled him in December to hammer out a bargain that paved the way for a crucial global treaty rewriting the rules of international trade.
This week that tenacity was apparent again, as Kantor negotiated nearly 24 hours a day--reconnoitering with aides when he was not in one-on-one talks with Japanese trade minister Ryutaro Hashimoto.
The role of key negotiator has been one Kantor has been filling for much of his adult life, as a legal services lawyer for poverty-stricken farm workers in the South and as a partner in the Los Angeles law firm of Manatt, Phelps & Phillips.
As a California political operative, he often played the role of negotiator in the campaigns of George S. McGovern, Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown and Walter F. Mondale, among others--and was ready to swear off politics, a course his friends doubt he could ever take, until his friend Bill Clinton decided to run for President.
After two decades of losses dating back to McGovern’s presidential campaign against Richard Nixon in 1972, the 1992 race would be his last, Kantor said.
Nevertheless, he plunged into it with fervor, landing in the midst of Clinton’s foundering primary campaign in New Hampshire. By the end of the finally successful national race, he had carved a cross-country path strewn with admirers of his unfailing energy and with egos bruised by his climb to the top as national chairman of the Clinton election drive.
Eventually he landed the seemingly second-tier job of U.S. trade representative, only to turn it into a suddenly crucial gear in the Administration’s drive to make international trade the engine for the nation’s economic rebirth.
Kantor, six weeks short of his 56th birthday, suffers from severe arthritis, which has swollen his knuckles and misshaped his fingers. To counter the effects of the disease, he runs early each morning. On Sunday, he flew to Geneva from Washington, arrived at midnight, went directly into a two-hour meeting with deputies who had preceded him--and by 5 a.m., he was on the road for his jog.
