As I have pointed out elsewhere, there is much more to the Japan auto trade story than meets the eye.

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China's government recently said it plans to boost the country's share of the global auto trade from its current 0.7 percent to 10 percent within 10 years.

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They still recall how a hard-nosed Hashimoto, as head of the Ministry of International Trade and Industry in 1995, skillfully upstaged U.S. trade representative Mickey Kantor in televised talks over the thorny issue of trade in auto parts.

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That prompts a thought: If many were wrong about the strength of agricultural opposition to TPP in Japan, could many also be wrong about the source of industrial opposition in the U.S.? Recent evidence suggests that U.S. auto opposition to free-trade deals is not insurmountable.

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Mr. CAL RAPSON (Vice President, United Auto Workers): And the trade that would have taken that liability off their books was some major job opportunities.

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Automakers exported more than 1.56 million U.S.-built vehicles to more than 200 countries in 2011, according to the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, a trade group representing 12 major auto companies.

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That's because the national car plan is largely meant to boost Indonesia's auto industry in time to meet the 2003 deadline set by AFTA for free trade among ASEAN states.

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More broadly, direct Chinese investment on U.S. shores may help improve the countries' fraught trade relationship, in the same way that a wave of Japanese auto plants did here in the 1980s and 1990s.

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