The 11 men and women who sit on the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission had a simple, straightforward assignment: determine which of two competing bidders, Japan's Sumitomo Corp. or Idaho's Morrison Knudsen, would do the best job manufacturing rail cars for the county's new transit system. In mid-December the commission voted 7 to 4 to award $122 million to Sumitomo for the job. But that was before President Bush made his ill-starred trip to Tokyo to wrest trade concessions from the Japanese and a shrill chorus shouting "Buy America" began to drown out all others on the L.A. commission. "No loyal American would hand over that contract to the Japanese," said Nate Holden, an L.A. city councilor. Last week the commission yanked the contract back from Sumitomo in a bald effort to save American jobs, and in a move almost certain to complicate the situation, Los Angeles tentatively decided to get into the rail-car manufacturing business itself, with an option to construct a $49 million factory. All contract winners will be required to keep 70% of the labor inside the U.S. and fully 60% within the borders of Los Angeles County. Crowed city councilman Joel Wachs: "This will reverberate around the country."
When Hiroshi Yamauchi, the president of Nintendo, bid $100 million to buy the Seattle Mariners baseball team last week, baseball commissioner Fay Vincent all but dismissed the offer, saying it was "unlikely that foreign investors" would win approval. Although by week's end Vincent had softened his position, his initial reaction reflected the nation's mood. In Japan- battered Michigan, where antagonism runs deep among autoworkers, U.A.W. Local 900 in Wayne made its own small stand for America last week, pushing foreign cars to a back parking lot at the local Ford plant. Around the nation, companies are offering incentives to workers who buy American cars. Monsanto, for example, will pay $1,000 to every one of its 12,000 workers who buys a car made in North America (or in one of Japan's American factories, such as Honda's Ohio plant or Nissan's Tennessee plant).
Much of the resentment, of course, is fueled by the seemingly endless recession. Bush's Tokyo foray, in which the enduring -- and symbolic -- image was of the American President collapsing into the lap of the Japanese Prime Minister, intensified American feelings of anger and humiliation. Pat Buchanan, whose New Hampshire stump speech includes numerous nods to his isolationist "America First" economic platform, fans the flames. "We're on a wave of Japan bashing that is much more serious than in previous years," concludes I.M. Destler, a visiting fellow at the Institute for International Economics in Washington.