(FORTUNE Magazine) – The auto executives, politicians, and consumers working themselves into an anti-Japan frenzy ought to put down the sword and pick up the mirror. No question, Japan's import barriers to goods such as rice and the incestuous links between its industrial giants stack the deck against foreign competition. But James Bovard, a policy analyst at the Cato Institute and author of The Fair Trade Fraud, points out that the U.S. is no saint when it comes to free trade. He estimates that U.S. consumers pay an extra $80 billion a year to protect weak industries from international competition through thousands of tariffs (see table for examples), so-called voluntary restraint agreements, and such restrictions on foreign investment as a 25% limit on U.S. airline ownership and 49% of fishing companies. Equating buying Japanese products with stealing American jobs ''goes to the line -- it's worse than a crime, it's a blunder,'' Bovard argues. ''There's an effort to tar and feather any Japanese company crossing the border into this country. But a lot of them provide benefits and teach invaluable skills to our workers.'' Indeed, the most recent Commerce Department figures show that businesses with Japanese majority ownership employ more than 360,000 workers in the U.S. (see table for a sampling). Many economists, including FORTUNE's, agree that the road back to American competitiveness will not be hedged with trade barriers. Rather, the productive path is paved with more savings, more investment in research and development, and much more education.

CHART: NOT AVAILABLE CREDIT: NAN LEE LUM FOR FORTUNE/SOURCE: THE FAIR TRADE FRAUD, BY JAMES BOVARD CAPTION: IMPORT TARIFFS IMPOSED BY A PROTECTIONIST U.S.

CHART: NOT AVAILABLE CREDIT: NO CREDIT CAPTION: JAPANESE EMPLOYERS IN THE U.S.