Small car sales boom

Willie Sutton is a name perhaps not as well known outside the United States as that of Abraham Lincoln or Bing Crosby. I doubt if he'd be remembered much, if at all, in America if it weren't that, like many another obscure person, he happened to make one immortal remark and he's in the new edition of Bartlett's Familiar Quotations because of it.

Sutton is gone now – a small, rather weedy man, he looked something like a derelict Adolphe Menjou. He was a lifelong bank robber, by which I mean he robbed banks often enough to get a life sentence. In his last days, he was asked, 'Why did you go on robbing banks?' He replied, 'Because that's where the money is!'.

This past week, Governor Reagan – we'd better call him Mr Reagan from now on so nobody will think he's still presiding over California – Mr Reagan and President Carter have been trading insults, in the main, accusing each other of threatening the security of the United States or the economy or the people's goodwill or whatever, by making political capital of every turn of events.

'Why', somebody wearily asked one of the president's campaign aides, 'why must everything that happens be subjected to a political calculation?' 'Because,' said the aide, 'in an election year, everything is political.'

Let's take the most controversial example. Every night, literally every night, the half-hour TV news programme of at least one national network ends with the reminder, 'This is the 319th day (or whichever) of the hostages captivity in Iran.' There are newspapers that print a box score in a front-page corner, the way department store advertisers, just about now, start to print reminders, 'Only 97 days to Christmas'.

Let me just recall that when the hostages were taken, the president's political opponents, the likely presidential candidates in particular, stayed mum and when the desert rescue mission failed they said, Mr Reagan in particular, that it was no time for recrimination. It was time to pray and stay behind the president. But now the nagging, the insoluble, presence of the hostages in captivity is being talked about by Mr Reagan as a national scandal, a wounding blow to American pride and competence.

So, last week, the Ayatollah Khomeini made a statement which, to rescue a crumb of sustenance from a stone, did not, at least, repeat the characterisation of Mr Carter as the American Satan. Mr Carter promptly said that the statement may very well lead to a resolution of this problem in the future. The Ayatollah laid down certain conditions, that the United States should unfreeze Iran's assets in the United States, should cancel all claims against Iran, should declare that it would not intervene in Iran's internal affairs and would promise to return the late Shah's fortune.

Now you'd expect that these conditions were what President Carter was talking about and that he would respond with a guarded but responsible reply to them. He suddenly went silent. While the White House was wondering how to reply, who should come up with a prompt and statesman-like reply but, of all alleged sabre-rattlers, Ronald Reagan?

He said, 'Yes, the United States should unfreeze the assets, cancel American claims against Iran, promise not to intervene in Iran's affairs.' But, as for returning the Shah's fortune, he said that couldn't properly be promised by the American government, it was a matter of property rights that would have to go through the courts.

This reply astounded people who've always believed that Mr Reagan's reflex to the trouble in Iran would be to send in the marines. It also infuriated President Carter because, some people suggest, Mr Reagan had taken the presidential words out of the president's hesitating mouth. Mr Carter certainly looked very grave when he made his next response on television. Mr Reagan, he would have us believe, was doing great mischief to the United States and the hostages by getting into negotiations with the Iranians. Mr Reagan was not negotiating. He was declaring his position on one of the most harrowing issues of the day, which he's expected to do on this and every other issue before election day.

His response gave legitimate delight to his followers, just as his prompt offer to debate with Mr Carter, Mr Anderson, one or either or both, did the week before. Whereas the president hasn't budged from the position that he won't debate with Mr Anderson because Mr Anderson is a figment or creation of the media and not the candidate of a national political party.

The League of Women Voters, which is sponsoring this debate, has held all along that Mr Anderson is the only other serious candidate, apart from Mr Reagan, will be on the ballots of all or nearly all of the states and ought to be allowed to state his case. The only sign of President Carter in his absence would be a third and empty chair. The White House didn't object. To its advisers, that chair would remind us of the throne the president sits on, of our lord and leader who is far too busy with majestic and delicate national matters to debate with an independent candidate who has barely 40 per cent as many supporters for the presidency as the president has. But 40 per cent of the backing an incumbent president can claim is an awful lot of votes.

What the promised empty chair signified to a disturbingly large number of people was that President Carter won't play unless they play by his rules. There was a sharp cartoon showing Reagan and Anderson in their chairs and the empty chair was a high chair, a baby's chair. This reaction delighted the Reagan camp followers but, on Wednesday, it was their turn to be put out when the League of Women Voters announced that there would be no empty chair. Mr Reagan's press secretary said there'd been an absolutely firm promise to have that chair. The White House said nothing but felt relieved.

The Republicans charge that the president is using his office to make political capital was given a gratuitous boost by the president himself when, on Thursday, he called a press conference, a very rare assumption of privilege for a president to make in the last months of a presidential campaign. We expected, I suppose, that he had some vital information to give to the people which would not wait. Instead, he gave a miniature State of the Nation address to show how well he's doing in everything from civil rights to controlling inflation, nuclear weapons, toxic wastes, a Middle Eastern peace, you name it.

He was telling us, I think, again that the electoral choice must be for a calm, sober, informed man, like himself, who uniquely has the nation's welfare at heart.

Now this is not at all to say that President Carter doesn't have the welfare of the American people at heart. Of course he does but, in his head, everything, it appears, is calculated to pacify this grievance in this state, grab the minority vote in that state. The worry of many people who wish him well, who've decided, however reluctantly, that he is preferable to Reagan, is that he will outfox himself.

Well, on one day last week, the OPEC ministers ended their meeting in Vienna and agreed on a price for oil which made people here feel a little easier about what it's going to cost to heat our homes and run our cars. The same day, a new motor car factory, an American factory, opened in New Jersey and a television station that never endorses or mentions a commercial product congratulated the Ford company because this new factory is dedicated exclusively to making small cars. Is this such a big deal?

Well, it's pitiful, but it is. It's the first, long overdue recognition that the United States has been losing out to Japan and Germany and Italy and France by a manufacturing policy which, apparently, ignored the existence of the OPEC nations and the lessons of the recession of six years ago. Now, early this year, the Ford Motor Company and the United Automobile Workers, together, petitioned the government for higher tariffs and quotas on Japanese imports, specifically automobiles. One car in four sold in this country is a Japanese product.

The way you get such a petition into law is long and leads through many doors. The petition goes first to a federal fact-finding body created by Congress which is called the International Trade Commission. Its research staff looks into the facts and sends a report to the body's five commissioners. They then send a recommendation to the president. The president can mull it over for 90 days, accept it in toto, in part, reject or modify it. Then, his recommendation, in the form of a bill or an amendment to the trade laws, goes to both houses of Congress. Their appropriate committees study it, the two committees of the Senate and the House meet and work out a compromised bill and then it goes to the floors of the two houses. Of course, along this tortuous way, Congress may just drop it.

Obviously, as far as the prospects of a successful petition are concerned, everything turns on the Trade Commission's original report. It is now in. Remember, the main grievance the Ford Company and the Automobile Workers want to redress is the flood of Japanese cars coming into this country. To be precise, grievance is not the technical word invoked by the petition. It must claim substantial injury. The company and the workers say they have been 'substantially injured' by the success of Japanese imports.

Not so, says the Commission report. Significantly, it concludes, the shift from larger cars appears greater than the shift to imports. In other words, the Commission is saying that the popular preference for Japanese cars has done less substantial injury to the industry than the search for any and all smaller cars. It's a conclusion millions of ordinary Americans came to years ago, when the first painful squeeze of OPEC almost tripled the price of gas (petrol) and sent people scurrying away from the big American gas guzzlers to buy small, petrol thrifty cars of ANY national make.

The American car industry looked on this retreat as a passing fad. The gas guzzler was a symbol of prosperity, wasn't it? The industry figured that when the 1974 recession ended, so would the retreat from the big car and all good Americans would crave them again.

Well, it didn't and they haven't.

This transcript was typed from a recording of the original BBC broadcast (© BBC) and not copied from an original script. Because of the risk of mishearing, the BBC cannot vouch for its complete accuracy.

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