Top Executives Think Growth Will Be Slow : Economy: It will be 2% the last half of this year and 3% next year, they say. Most fret about a Clinton victory.

HOT SPRINGS, Va. —  The executives running the nation’s biggest companies aren’t very optimistic about business next year, and the prospect of a Democrat sitting in the White House isn’t making them feel any better.

The 100 top corporate leaders who gathered this weekend for the fall meeting of the Business Council are looking for anemic 2% economic growth during the second half of the year and only a modestly better 3% rate next year. That was the consensus, based on informal interviews of many of the executives.

They don’t expect the outcome of the election battle between President Bush and Democrat Bill Clinton to affect the forecast.

But most of the executives hobnobbing on the tennis courts and golf course of the secluded Homestead resort believe that Clinton’s election in the long run will mean more trade barriers, more government spending and regulation.

“One candidate professes more government in all aspects of our lives, and I’ve seldom seen government do more and do it well,” said Robert E. Allen, chairman of AT&T.; “The other candidate says, ‘Let’s get the government out of the way.’ . . . That’s a more sound course for this country.”

The executives said Clinton’s stance on the North American Free Trade Agreement led them to question his commitment to free trade. The Democrat has endorsed the trade pact but has called for side agreements on labor and environmental issues, a demand that the business leaders said could politically derail the pact in Mexico and Canada.

John F. Welch Jr., chairman of General Electric Co., wondered whether Clinton, once in office, would become allied with protectionist members of Congress.

“I’m worried as hell that the Flat Earth Society may come back again,” he said. “I know where Congress is (on trade), and I’m concerned that the last time the two of them (Congress and the President) got together, they all agreed on everything.”

But two prominent computer industry executives--John Sculley of Apple Computer Inc. and John A. Young of Hewlett-Packard Co.--defended Clinton’s business philosophy and said he is in favor of free trade.

Even some Bush supporters conceded Clinton’s skill as a politician and said he will probably win.

“People blame Bush more than they should, but he hasn’t responded in a way that’s been meaningful to the common Joe Six-Pack. . . . I’m a Republican and I’m going to vote for him but I think he’s going to lose. . . . Bush is vanilla when we need pistachio in this country,” said Howard P. Allen, chairman of Southern California Edison Co.

Although the business leaders nearly all favor reducing the federal budget deficit, they said fellow corporate executive Ross Perot’s plan would bring too much reduction too fast.

“You’ll have a depression, not a recession,” said John J. Murphy, chairman of Dresser Industries Inc.