For the last year, politicians and policymakers have spent considerable time debating tariffs, quotas, managed trade, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and U.S.-Japan economic relations. The press, which formerly confined these issues to the business section, has begun to give them front-page billing. But greater attention has not led to greater clarity.

Last December, for instance, as the primary campaigns began, reporters described the issues surrounding Bush's trip to Japan as protectionism vs. free trade. On December 30, for example, Frank Murray of The Washington Times wrote that Bush went to Japan with "the sure knowledge that free trade vs. protectionism will be an emotional issue in Congress and the 1992 presidential election." The same day The New York Times's Keith Bradsher, purporting to explain the debate over the president's trip, wrote that "fair trade has often been a euphemism in Washington for protectionism." The next day Washington Post reporter Paul Blustein reported that the Japanese wanted to weaken "the political momentum behind protectionist legislation in Congress."

Throughout the first months of the campaign, reporters for USA Today, the Houston Chronicle, the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Times, and The New York Times continued to refer to politicians, policies, and legislation as "protectionist." The New York Times was a particularly frequent user of the term. On January 14, Richard Berke, analyzing the election debate, described Representative Richard Gephardt as having fought unsuccessfully in the 1988 election for "protectionist labor," an ambiguous but clearly derogatory term. On January 26, David Rosenbaum, in an article headed CANDIDATES PLAYING TO MOOD OF PROTECTIONISM, declared that "the protectionist movement has gained strength this election year."

By the spring, both the Democratic and Republican races were settled, but then billionaire Ross Perot hinted that he would run for president. In describing Perot's views on trade and his opposition to NAFTA, reporters once again used the term "protectionist." Again, The New York times led the pack. On June 14, Steven Holmes wrote: "Mr. Perot denies he is a protectionist, but he often says that a tougher policy is needed in negotiations with American trading partners, especially Japan" -- the astounding implication being that getting tough in negotiations is equivalent to protectionism. On June 27, Steven Greenhouse, citing Perot's opposition to NAFTA on the ground that it would entail "a massive loss of jobs to Mexico," wrote: "Viewing trade policy as a potent tool for strengthening industry, Mr. Perot sounds far more protectionist than Mr. Bush or Mr. Clinton."

Other publications followed suit. Richard Benedetto of USA Today reported on June 17 that Perot's supporters had a "strong protectionist and isolationist bent" because they "favor trade restrictions on Japan and reducing the U.S. [military] role. . . ." On July 10, Tom Walker of The Atlanta Journal and Constitution reported without comment or contradictions the opinion of the chief investment strategist at Salomon Brothers that Perot's policies could mean "a retreat to a 1930s style of protectionism."

What's wrong with all this?

Of course, a politician might be described as wanting to "protect" a particular industry, but his is not the same as saying that he or she embraces the ideology of protectionism. "Protectionist" and "protectionism" are terms that may have some utility in a polemic, but they should not be used in news stories without being surrounded by quotation marks and historical explanation. Calling current trade legislation "protectionist" is very similar to calling proposals for national health insurance "socialist."

The label came into vogue during the debate over trade that began after the Civil War and culminated in the infamous Smoot-Hawley tariff of 1930. During this time, self-avowed protectionists believed that the U.S. should concentrate its economic activities on this continent and keep out foreign imports. As historian Paul Wolman writes in Most Favored Nation, they believed that "the continental United States . . . provided sufficient scope for the expansive energies of American capitalism." Protectionists, he adds, wanted uniformily high tariffs that would "act as a 'Chinese Wall' to barEuropean or other foreign goods that might supplant domestic products and discourage domestic development."

After World War I, protectionists were unwilling to recognize that the U.S. had become inextricably part of a global economy. During the first years of the depression they backed the Smoot-Hawley tariff, which, by erecting high tariffs against imports, helped set off an international trade war that deepended the world depression. The tariff's failure discredited protectionists and strengthened the trend toward reciprocal trade agreements and -- after World War II -- toward removing all trade barriers. For at least four decades politicians and policy intellectuals shunned both the name and ideology of protectionism.

That remains the case today. No major political figure -- from Representative Gephardt to columnist Pat Buchanan to Senator Tom Harkin -- advocate systematic tariffs against all foreign imports or argues that American companies should devote themselves to their "home market." they understand that the U.S. is part of world capitalism. Some politicians do advocate tariffs and quotas, but as specific, temporary expedients to remedy disparities in American trade relations with particular countries. Critics have focused on Japan because they believe that Japan practices a form of economic mercantilism aimed at encouraging exports and discouraging imports. They criticize Japan because they believe it subverts the post-World War II ideal of an integrated world market.

Politicians' criticisms of the North American Free Trade Agreement are also based on assumptions very different from protectionism. NAFTA critics are not primarily concerned with Mexican firms importing cheap goods into the U.S., but with American firms moving their operations to Mexico so they can take advantage of low wages and lax environmental standards. The issue is capital mobility, not imports. And NAFTA's critics do not call for closing the border with Mexico. Rather, they want a more gradual transition to an integrated market.

Yet in spite of the difference between these positions and those of classic protectionism, the press has persisted, without any qualification, in labeling managed-trade proponents and NAFTA critics as "protectionist." The result is to stigmatize their positions by identifying them with the failure of the Smoot-Hawley tariff.

If reporters' use of "protectionist" reflects a lack of historical knowledge, their use of the term "Japan basher" reflects a naivete about how Washington lobbyists and public relations flacks shape policy debates. The label "Japan basher" first appeared in the early 1980s. Its inventor was Robert Angel, the former president of the Japan Economic Institute, a Washington institute financed and overseen by Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Angel, who is now a political scientist at the University of South Carolina, wanted to counter the mounting public criticism of Japan's trade policies. "I looked around for a phrase to use to discredit Japan's critics, and I hoped to beable to discredit those most effective critics by lumping them together with the people who weren't informed and who as critics were an embarrassment to everybody else," Angel says.

Angel's goal was to discredit opposition to Japan's trade practices by insinuating that it was based on racism and xenophobia. His model was the pro-Israel lobby's use of the term anti-Semitism to stigmatize opponents of Israel's policies. he first tried out the term "anti-Japanism" in speeches and interviews but it didn't stick. Then, inspired by the British term "Paki-bashing," he tried "Japan bashing" -- and it worked. "The first people to pick up on it were the Japanese press," Angel says. "However, within a year the American press began to use the term." The term became a weapon in the public relations war being waged in Washington over trade policy and U.S.-Japanese economic relations.

Angel is now embarrassed by his triumph. "I view that modest public relations success with some shame and disappointment," he says. "Those people who use [the term] have the distinction of being my intellectual dupes."

Still, the term continues to be widely used -- not only by the Japanese press and officials, but also by the American press. In the last year, columnists and editorial writers used it frequently against Japan's critics and against proponents of trade legislation. On January 6, for example, syndicated columnist Edwin Yoder described Republican presidential candidate Buchanan as having emerged "as an incipient trade protectionist and Japan basher." On February 7, Washington Post business columnist Hobart Rowen cited without comment Japanese opinion that on hi strip to Tokyo "Bush succumbed to pressures of the Republican right from Pat Buchanan, and from the entire range of Democratic candidates, to bash Japan."

Reporters have also used the term uncritically. In a January 6 Los Angeles Times story, Donald Woutat described Representative John Dingell as a "reputed Japan basher." In the February 6 New York Times, R. W. Apple wrote that "the only foreign policy topic on which the Democratic candidates have spent much time so far has been trade, especially trade with Japan. Some bash Japan and some don't.

On February 25, Tom Brown wrote in The Seattle Times that when "Senator Slade Gorton talks about the value of free trade, nobody in Japan listens because he is drowned out by Japan bashers in Congress." The next day, Judi Hasson wrote in USA Today that "the Japanese are paying closer attention to this year's U.S. presidential race because of increased 'Japan bashing' on the campaign trail."

One might argue that "protectionist" and "Japan basher" are just minor terms in a larger analysis of a politician or policy-maker's position. Unfortunately, that's not the case. In a scholarly treatise, in which terms are carefully explained, the whole can be greater than its parts, but in news articles and analyses, loaded terms with long histories or damaging connotations can obscure subtler distinctions.

That has been particularly true in the last year. As the debate over trade has moved onto the front pages, reporters with little expertise in international economics have used these terms as hooks on which they can hang what appear to be weighty analyses. In the process, they have misled both the public and themselves.

Undoubtedly, some reporters and editors have used these terms to slander politicians and to discredit positions they disagree with. But most of the press has probably not been guilty of over bias. Rather, reporters and editorial writers have been left behind by historical changes that have undetermined the way we have been accustomed to thinking about politics and economics. The debate over trade -- like the debate over post-cold war foreign policy or government economic intervention -- is largely without precedent.

Not just economic terminology, but the major political terms of the last five decades -- liberal, conservative, internationalist -- have lost their clear application.

What should the press do? It should be extremely cautious about using political labels as objective descriptions. it should not try to reduce complex arguments to simple slogans. And it should acknowledge in its coverage that it is traveling on uncharted terrain.

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