Lessons From an Earlier Foreign Journey

Consider this a mea culpa. A “skinback,” in reporters’ jargon. A “He told me so.”

He is George Deukmejian, the former California governor. And this is long overdue.

A dozen years ago, the then-governor ventured off on his first trade junket. In fact, it was Deukmejian’s first overseas trip of any kind since his Army youth.

We--reporters, trade experts, even aides--got a good laugh watching the Duke trek around Japan trying to peddle California rice. This naive guy didn’t understand that home-grown rice is practically sacred in Japan, we snickered. It’s about Japanese culture, memories of wartime starvation and self-sufficiency. Don’t bother.

And now, of course, California sells tons of rice to Japan--300,000 metric tons annually, worth $100 million.

My old guilt feelings were revived by Gov. Gray Davis’ current trade junket to London, Dublin, St. Andrews golf course, Athens, Jerusalem and a campaign contributor’s water project in Egypt.

As with Davis, it wasn’t all business for Deukmejian. He did some serious sightseeing. But, unlike Davis, he never used a foreign trip to reward big-bucks political donors with personal access. Davis chose as traveling companions some very rich men who each gave his election campaign more than $100,000.

Deukmejian did it the right way and, as it turned out, said all the right things. And he should get credit for that now, because he didn’t then.

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Japanese officials and State Department eggheads had urged Deukmejian not to bring up rice. “It was a big no-no,” recalls attorney Steven Merksamer, then the governor’s chief of staff. “Yellow lights were flashing.”

Jim Robinson, now a U.S. Chamber of Commerce official, but then the governor’s trade advisor, remembers the Japanese consul general in San Francisco telling Deukmejian: “ ‘Mr. governor, I beg you not to raise the subject of rice. It’s very sensitive. You have to understand Japanese history. We have to protect the rice crop. . . .’ ”

An L.A.-based trade consultant told me: “Negotiating for rice is like negotiating for Mt. Fuji.”

When he got to Tokyo, Deukmejian went to the office of the agriculture minister. “We don’t have a lot of time,” the minister admonished him, “so don’t waste it on rice.”

But Deukmejian--in his amiable, unemotional, but firm way--talked up California rice that day and for a week. The Japanese people pay 10 times more for domestic rice than they would for California rice, he repeated.

“Falling on deaf ears . . . a sign of failure,” I wrote. Was I ever wrong.

“Once in a while, you’ve got to hit people over the head with a two-by-four to get their attention,” observed the late Clare Berryhill, then California’s agriculture director. Berryhill was a San Joaquin Valley farmer, a plain-talking, likable scrapper who kept egging on Deukmejian throughout the trip. He may have been the only advisor who did.

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The two-by-four approach was exactly the governor’s strategy. Not only on rice, but on a long list of California products, from citrus to computer chips.

“I knew that rice was so highly visible that it would draw attention to our main goal, which was to open up Japan’s market to all California products,” recalls Deukmejian, now an L.A. lawyer. “There was some criticism and chiding, but I felt it was a stronger, more effective way to highlight their closed market.

“I have to admit, this was a whole area that was foreign to me. That’s not meant as a pun. I felt a little bit uneasy and uncertain. Of course, I didn’t want them to know that.”

Back in Sacramento, somebody found a legal loophole that allowed a Japanese tourist to buy a pretty box of rice at a duty-free shop and take it home. So the state funded a small, in-your-face enterprise at LAX to whet Japanese appetites.

Then nature stepped in. Massive monsoons destroyed much of Japan’s rice crop in 1993, just as California’s long drought ended, producing a near-record harvest in the Sacramento Valley. Japan reluctantly bought an emergency shipment.

Soon after--in what the prime minister called a “painful, heartbreaking decision”--Japan formally opened its rice market, pressured by world trade negotiations.

Today, Japan buys 20% of California’s rice crop. An extra 80,000 acres have been added to production. Growers are using water more efficiently and have greatly reduced their straw burning, which pollutes the air. Harvested fields now are flooded in the fall to provide a delicious soup for migrating ducks and geese.

Nobody can say how big a role Deukmejian played in prying open Japan’s rice market. But we can say his instincts were right. And our snickering conventional wisdom was wrong.