Critical Cross-Fire Assails Bush’s Trade Trip to Japan : Campaign: Bentsen, Buchanan attack the effort. Top Administration aides defend the President’s mission.

WASHINGTON — Critics from right and left Sunday assailed President Bush’s trade trip to Japan, with Republican presidential candidate Patrick J. Buchanan calling it “a fiasco” and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Lloyd Bentsen (D-Tex.) saying the Japanese concessions on cars were “too little, 10 years too late.”

Two top Bush aides--National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft and reelection campaign manager Robert A. Mosbacher--defended the trade mission, signaling how intense the issue is likely to become in the first-in-the-nation New Hampshire presidential primary Feb. 18.

Apparently aiming to embarrass the Administration for its failure to return home with huge concessions from Tokyo, Bentsen set a hearing of his committee for Jan. 22 to consider Japan’s pledge to reduce its $41-billion trade surplus with the United States by agreeing to import 20,000 U.S. cars by 1994.

Of the Japanese concession, “my guess is that it’s too little, 10 years too late,” Bentsen said in a written statement after his appearance on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

“The Administration has stated that our trade deficit with Japan cost the United States 800,000 U.S. jobs,” he declared. “I’d like to know how many of those jobs we can expect to regain because of these concessions.”

Meanwhile, Buchanan, who has been campaigning in New Hampshire on an “America First” platform, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that Bush “got a reality check in Tokyo.”

“When Mr. Bush called and asked for a couple of concessions from his old friends, he got something close to a stone wall,” he said. “I hope the President will come home and realize he’s got to start taking care of his own country first.”

Administration officials and Bush critics have been debating the efficacy of the trip and its agreements since before the President returned Friday. Supporters contend that the visit produced agreements likely to increase U.S. sales to Japan and to produce as many as 200,000 jobs at home. Critics, led by the contingent of U.S. auto executives that accompanied the President to Japan, say that the trip produced little of long-term substance.

The attacks by Bentsen and Buchanan were the latest and most political that have been leveled at Bush’s efforts to persuade Japan to open its markets wider to U.S. firms. With the clear intention of assisting the Democratic Party’s efforts to regain the White House, Bentsen speculated that Buchanan’s criticism of the President may unravel Bush’s standing in the New Hampshire primary and imperil his reelection.

“You know, if (Buchanan) gets as much as 25% of the vote (in the New Hampshire primary), that’ll be a rather ominous signal for the White House,” Bentsen said. “If he gets as much as 35%, then they really have problems.”

Bentsen pointed to the 1968 election, when Democratic challenger Eugene J. McCarthy garnered 42% of the New Hampshire primary vote over then-incumbent President Lyndon B. Johnson.

“The public figured that Lyndon Johnson had lost,” Bentsen said, drawing a comparison with the current GOP fight. “I can remember a few weeks later he dropped out of the race.”

Brushing off the attacks, Scowcroft pronounced Bush’s trip to Japan “a definite success.”

Scowcroft, also appearing on “Face the Nation,” acknowledged that the Administration’s decision to take along the chief executives of U.S. auto firms was “controversial.” However, he defended the action “as a good idea” even in the wake of the executives’ criticism of the trade negotiations.

“They’re free, independent businessmen and we didn’t attempt to control them, what they said or, basically, what they did,” Scowcroft said, referring to the business leaders’ harsh remarks after returning home. “What we really hoped to do is set up a direct dialogue with their counterparts in Japan so that they could develop relationships.”

Mosbacher, outgoing commerce secretary, who organized the trip to Japan, becomes Bush’s campaign manager this week. He has been criticized for proposing that the U.S. businessmen tag along on the trip. Some observers have called their presence a stunt to boost the President’s sagging popularity.

Mosbacher dismissed such talk, saying that the executives were invited because automobiles are an important component of the trade-deficit problem.

“We talked about that,” he said on CNN’s “Newsmaker Sunday” program, “but you couldn’t leave the auto executives at home because the autos are one-half of our total trade deficit with Japan. . . . It’s a major part of the problem with Japan.”