LOOKS GOOD, BUT WHAT'S UNDER THE HOOD?

Some truisms: peace is better than war. Any increase in sales of U.S. goods to foreigners is preferable to none. A door to Japanese markets pushed open a crack beats one slammed shut. So the auto-and-parts agreement concluded by U.S. and Japanese negotiators in Geneva last week, just barely in time to head off a possible transpacific trade war, looks beneficial to both sides.

But.

Spin doctors in Washington and Tokyo to the contrary, the eleventh-hour deal is more of a truce than a real peace. To be sure, the pact left both sides momentarily ebullient. In Tokyo an official of the Ministry of International Trade and Industry reported after the deal was struck, "They're so happy that they're giddy over there" -- over there meaning in the office of Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama. And by transatlantic telephone Bill Clinton told U.S. Trade Representative Mickey Kantor, "Hey, Mick, congratulations. It sounds like you did great." It may not have been a cigar-on-the-veranda moment for the President, but he was clearly pleased. And, maybe more to the point, relieved.

The auto pact kept the peace -- for now -- largely because, in the grand tradition of U.S.-Japanese trade settlements, it left Washington and Tokyo ample room to quarrel about just what it was they had agreed to. Clinton enthused, "This agreement is specific. It is measurable. It will achieve real, concrete results." In Tokyo, however, Hisashi Hosokawa, a hard-line miti official, insisted that "this agreement is a rejection of numerical targets" for Japanese purchases of American cars and parts. His boss, miti Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto, may have strengthened his already bright chances for becoming Japan's next Prime Minister: he was being hailed as a hero precisely for having got Kantor to drop a U.S. demand for such targets.

The facts tend to support the Japanese in this argument. The auto deal between the two governments contains no hard numbers. Kantor and Clinton have pointed to a few anyway: 1,000 more Japanese dealers selling American cars in five years; a prospective increase of $9 billion in three years-or roughly 50%-in sales of U.S.-made auto parts to Japanese buyers. These are American estimates of what will happen if Japanese carmakers carry out pledges they supposedly made "voluntarily" and which are additionally subject to changing business conditions. But Hashimoto has made it clear that the Tokyo government does not guarantee that these-or any-targets will be reached. The pact provides for regular reviews to see how it is working out, yet prevents the U.S. from applying new sanctions if Japanese companies fall short of their promises.