[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1993, Book I)]
[July 9, 1992]
[Pages 1037-1043]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



The President's News Conference in Tokyo
July 9, 1992

    The President. Good evening. The summit we have concluded today 
sends a message of hope to America and to the world. Some have called 
this a jobs summit, and they are right because the creation of new jobs 
in the United States and in all the other countries here present was at 
the center of all of our discussions.
    All of us are mindful that we have a long way to go to restore real 
growth and opportunity to the global economy, but we have made a serious 
start. We reached an agreement here that can open manufacturing markets 
to American products and to all other products in ways that we have not 
seen in many years. Indeed, the agreement if finally concluded could 
bring the largest reduction in tariffs in world history.
    While tough negotiations still remain, this world trade agreement 
captures the momentum that we have needed in these negotiations for a 
long time. We now can move toward completion of a broader trade 
agreement that could spur the creation of hundreds of thousands of jobs 
over the next decade in the United States and millions throughout the 
world.
    We also agreed that the other industrialized nations will send their 
top education, labor, and economic ministers to Washington in the fall 
for a serious conference on the creation of jobs. All the advanced 
nations are having difficulty creating new jobs even when their 
economies are growing. This was a constant cause of concern in all of 
our conversations, and we are now going to make a serious effort to 
examine the problem from every angle and to try to come up with new and 
innovative solutions which can be helpful in the United States and 
throughout the G-7 countries. We have to figure out how to unlock the 
doors for people who are left behind in this new global economy.
    I want to say a special word of appreciation that the other 
industrial nations expressed their support and praise for the United 
States' economic plan to reduce our deficit dramatically and invest in 
our future.

[[Page 1038]]

    Ever since 1980, whenever these meetings have occurred, the 
statements issued at the end have either explicitly or implicitly 
criticized the United States for our budget deficit. This statement 
explicitly supports the United States for our effort to bring the 
deficit down and to bring growth and investment back into our economy.
    Other nations clearly welcome our resolve. I might note that the 
fact that both Houses of Congress had passed the economic plan greatly 
strengthened my hand in the discussions and the negotiations which have 
taken place here this week.
    This summit also held out fresh hope for other peoples of the world, 
especially those involved in democratic reform in Russia, led by 
President Yeltsin who joined us here today. The $3 billion program we 
announced here to help Russia move to a market system will not only 
bolster prospects for freedom there, it is a very solid investment for 
the United States. Funds to move state-owned industries to private hands 
to make the free enterprise system work, funds to make available 
operations for new enterprises, funds from the World Bank, and funds for 
credits for export, all these things will help Americans to do more 
business in Russia and will help Russia to succeed in a way that will 
continue the path charted by the end of the cold war, fewer nuclear 
weapons, fewer defense investments, more opportunities to invest in 
people and jobs and a peaceful future.
    American leadership has been indispensable to growth and to freedom 
throughout this century. In partnership with others, we will now be able 
to continue to meet that responsibility in the years ahead. I have said 
before and I will say again, I came to this summit in the hope that we 
could get an agreement to open more markets to manufactured products, in 
the hope that we could get a strong program for Russian aid, in the hope 
that together we would demonstrate resolve to restore the ability of all 
of our countries to create jobs and opportunities for our people. I 
believe those objectives were achieved. And I am pleased at the first of 
these G-7 meetings which I was able to attend.
    Helen [Helen Thomas, United Press International].

Japan

    Q. Mr. President, a host of Presidents have tried to convince Japan 
that trade is a two-way street. What makes you think you can convince 
them? What is the chance of getting an agreement on trade talks? And 
what did you learn at the summit that you didn't know before?
    The President. You ask a lot of questions. What did you say? You 
have a followup? [Laughter] No, Brit [Brit Hume, ABC News], you get the 
followup.
    I think we do have a chance to get an agreement, and I think in part 
it is because we are coming to a common understanding that the serious 
imbalance in trade between our two nations cannot continue and that, in 
the end, it is not in the interest of either country.
    I met this morning with several hundred members of the American 
Chamber of Commerce here in Tokyo, people who are selling their products 
and services in this country. They pointed out and illustrated to me 
once again why more sales of American products in the Japanese market 
would be good for both countries. When these people come here, they hire 
Japanese people. They create jobs here in Japan. But as the market is 
opened up, the price of products and service and their variety is 
dramatically expanded--the price is driven down; the variety and number 
of services and products are expanded. So the Japanese people will win 
if we can correct this imbalance. And of course, the American people 
will win. It will mean lots more jobs for our folks.
    That's what I tried to say at Waseda University. I think that we are 
now coming to a common understanding that it is in the interest of both 
countries to change this policy. I think we're also coming to a common 
understanding that we have to try some new approaches, that Americans 
have had real increases in productivity and quality--we are now the 
high-quality, low-cost producer of many products and services--and that 
that alone is not going to be sufficient to change the market imbalance. 
And I think those two realizations give us a shot. And I'm hoping that 
we can move forward.
    What did I learn that I didn't know when I got here? I learned a lot 
more about the other world leaders. I got to know them all better. I got 
to understand more about where they're coming from, what their 
countries' problems and opportunities are, and what we can achieve 
together. I'm, frankly, more optimistic about our potential for common 
action than I was before I came here.
    I also feel much better about our long-term

[[Page 1039]]

capacity to make some progress in our relationships with Japan. I was 
glad to be the first American President ever to address a university 
audience and to answer questions there. And I feel much more positively 
about that relationship than I did when I came here. And it is, perhaps, 
our most bilateral relationship. So that's very good.

Russia

    Q. Mr. President, Boris Yeltsin said today that sooner or later 
Russia would make the G-7 a G-8. My question is why not sooner than 
later? What are the arguments against keeping Russia out of the G-7?
    The President. Well, I don't want to make the argument against 
keeping Russia out of the G-7. I do believe that you will see him here 
every time we meet as long as he is President of Russia, which I think 
will be quite a while. And I think that's a very good thing.
    I think that when the G-7 was organized, it was organized as a group 
of the world's most powerful economic interests and not just political 
interests. And I think that there will come a time when Russia will 
probably join this group when there is a consensus that that time has 
come.
    To be fair to all the people who are here, there was really no 
serious discussion of that. But for the first time, President Yeltsin 
was invited to come next year before he ever even made a statement. That 
was part of the Chairman, Prime Minister Miyazawa's opening statement, 
to make sure he would know that he was going to be invited to come and 
participate in next year's meeting in Italy.
    Brit.

Multilateral Trade Negotiations

    Q. Mr. President, you mentioned that further negotiation must be 
done toward a new world trade agreement. One of the major sticking 
points for a number of years has, of course, been the issue of 
agriculture subsidies and agriculture generally. I wondered what, if 
anything, you may have heard here from your counterparts from Europe and 
the EC and from Japan that renews your hope, if it does, that such a 
thing may be possible by December, as you've suggested.
    The President. Well, if all the Europeans will adhere to the Blair 
House accords, I think there's a good chance we can have an agricultural 
agreement.
    As you know, France has some problems with it and has expressed 
those. And it was an issue in the last election in France. But as I 
pointed out, the United States cut our agricultural subsidies 
unilaterally and substantially in 1990, and we have proposed further 
reductions this year as part of the deficit reduction package. If we 
were to reopen the Blair House accord, our farmers would want us to go 
in the opposite direction on these issues from the direction that some 
of the European interests would take.
    Because the European Community is made up of diverse nations, they 
have a mechanism within the Community to make adjustments among the 
countries if they adhere to an agreement like an agricultural agreement 
that affects some countries more adversely than others. So I'm still 
hopeful that as these negotiations resume--and they will resume in 
Geneva soon--that the Blair House accord will stand and that we'll be 
able to work out a balance of trade agreements that will enable it to 
stand.
    If that happens, then much of what we need to do in agriculture will 
have been done. This market opening agreement, if it can be embraced by 
the other nations at the GATT, will be nailed down, and then we'll just 
have a few issues left to go. I remind you the majority of the issues 
have been resolved although some of the tough ones remain.
    Andrea [Andrea Mitchell, NBC News].

North Korea

    Q. Mr. President, a week ago before leaving for Asia, you said that 
North Korea was perhaps the scariest place in the world. And many 
analysts including Larry Eagleburger have said that North Korea already 
has the bomb; others believe that it is at least very close to having 
the bomb. Would you consider a preemptive strike? Would you rule that 
out? And what message do you want to send in your trip to South Korea 
about our military interests in the region and about the role of our 
American troops?
    The President. Well, first of all, I don't answer hypothetical 
questions, especially as they relate to national security, for obvious 
reasons. But the message should be clear. Even as we move into and 
through the 6th year of defense cuts, we are not reducing our base 
presence in Japan; we are not reducing our base presence in Korea. We 
are strengthening our military presence in Asia and in the Pacific, and 
we reaffirm our

[[Page 1040]]

security commitments to Japan and to Korea and to all our other allies 
in this region. And we intend to press to see that the Non-Proliferation 
Treaty's regime is fully observed, including having the international 
observers there.
    That is the position that the United States takes. And I think we 
have to adhere to it very firmly.
    Susan [Susan Spencer, CBS News].
    Q. So what should we do about North Korea, sir?
    The President. Well, we don't--North Korea has not yet declined to 
comply. And we're going to have to--let us continue the negotiations. 
Until there is a rupture that seems final, I don't think we should talk 
about what would happen at that point.

Approval Ratings and the Economic Summmit

    Q. Sir, before the summit started it was noted widely that your own 
approval ratings, as unhappy as you may sometimes be with them, were 
higher than those of any other political leader here. Virtually all of 
these people are either on the way out or in some great difficulty at 
home. How did that diminish this summit? And having been to one now and 
seen how bureaucratic they can be, do you really think in these days of 
modern communications that these sorts of extravaganzas are necessary at 
all?
    The President. Well, first of all, I think that it did not diminish 
the summit. In fact, there was more done here and there was more energy 
and more zip in it than I thought there would be. And I think part of it 
was, apparently, this summit is less bureaucratic than its predecessors. 
We ended two of our meetings an hour early, which I liked awful well. 
And there was an amazing amount of open, free flow of honest exchange. 
It was very, very good.
    I think that any time you have the major economies of the world in 
the doldrums, combined in some of these countries with a real impetus 
toward political reform and a felt need of the people to make their 
political systems work better, you can't expect to see high poll 
numbers. When people are having a tough time making ends meet, they 
don't tend to be very happy with their political leaders. So that is a 
given.
    Notwithstanding that, this summit produced real substantive benefits 
for the people who sent these leaders here.
    Now, there was a reaffirmation, a unanimous reaffirmation on the 
part of the heads of state in this meeting to make this process less 
bureaucratic, less expensive, and less cumbersome. And I think you will 
see an even more streamlined summit next year in Italy, one in which all 
the delegations are smaller and in which there is more flexibility. I 
hope that something was learned out of this summit, that if you focus on 
one or two objectives and really work at it and work at it, you can get 
something done.
    Wolf [Wolf Blitzer, Cable News Network] and then David [David 
Lauter, Los Angeles Times].

Iraq

    Q. Mr. President, even as you were meeting here with these other 
world leaders, there seems to be another standoff in Baghdad with U.N. 
weapons inspectors and the Iraqi Government. Double-pronged question: 
How serious is this, and what, if anything, is the U.S. prepared to do? 
Is there a unilateral response, or would it be only multilateral this 
time?
    The President. First of all, I think it is serious. And secondly, 
the response should be a multilateral one. The action we took in 
response to the plot to assassinate President Bush was a unilateral one, 
and it should have been, clearly provided for under international law. 
This action is a violation of the United Nations resolutions, and we are 
going to keep pushing on it. Hopefully, the Iraqis will relent. If they 
don't, then we'll go back to the U.N., to the Security Council, and 
decide where to go from there.
    David.

Economic Summit and Job Creation

    Q. Mr. President, if I could follow up for a moment on your answer 
to Susan's question, I wonder, given that these things tend to be very 
scripted and set out ahead of time, was there any moment in this thing, 
any event that happened over the last few days that told you something 
that you didn't know, that presented things in a new light that might 
give us some insight into how this process works?
    The President. Well, first of all, there were moments that were not 
at all scripted. The first time we met everybody went around the table 
and sort of described the condition of the economy in each country and 
what the government was attempting to do about it. And that was somewhat 
scripted in the sense that everyone was told in advance we'd be asked to 
do that. After that, only the topics were basically

[[Page 1041]]

scripted. Very few of us carried a lot of notes around. Very few people 
referred to them. We really talked about these issues.
    I think the thing that impressed me the most--maybe it's just 
because what I'm most concerned about--was the high level of rather 
sophisticated knowledge that all these people had about the stagnation 
of their own economies when it comes to creating jobs. For example, it 
was pointed out that the French economy was actually, by every other 
measure, very, very strong in most years of the eighties and several 
years had a higher growth rate than the German economy. And they still 
never got their unemployment rate below 9.5 percent, even when they were 
just really chugging along. The Japanese economy which still enjoys 
quite a low unemployment rate, in part because of the structure of this 
economy, still is having quite a lot of difficulty creating jobs.
    Most of these countries have very low population growth rates, 
rapidly aging population, and they're very worried that unless they can 
turn this situation around that 10 years from now they're going to have 
two people working for every person that's retired. And they're really 
quite concerned about it. I think the fact that they're all thinking 
about it and they all had a little bit different take on it, gave me 
some hope that we might be able to find some solutions.
    Q. Did anyone offer solutions?
    The President. Well, there were lots of different solutions offered. 
But one of the things--Helmut Kohl is a very wise man, I think, and one 
of the things he said that was interesting was that if we could come to 
grips with this in the same way we try to come to grips with trade 
problems, for example, that if there are tough decisions to be made, it 
will be easier for each country to make them if the people who live in 
each country are aware that this is a worldwide problem and that there 
have to be some new and different directions taken.

Hillary Clinton

    Q. Mr. President, your wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, has caused 
quite a stir in Japan, and yet she's followed a very traditional wives' 
schedule here which, frankly, doesn't seem much like her. I wonder if 
she's been muzzled here perhaps to avoid offending Japanese 
sensibilities?
    The President. No, she did what she wanted to do. She thought about 
it quite a lot, and I've been, frankly, impressed and gratified by the 
response that she's gotten from just the people in the street, 
especially the young working women as well as the students at the 
university the other day. And I think it's a real indication of the 
aspirations of younger Japanese people to see that everybody here has a 
chance to live up to their potential. I was really very pleased by it.

Economic Program

    Q. You return home in a few days. You're going to be facing kind of 
a do-or-die situation with the budget bill which got you so much play 
here. How do you relate your accomplishments from this week to what 
faces you when you get back next week?
    The President. Well, it certainly ought to strengthen the resolve of 
the Congress to carry through on this. There's no question that the 
other countries were very much encouraged by the determination of the 
United States to reduce its deficit, that they believe that's one of the 
things that has distorted the world economy for the last several years.
    And likewise, there is no question that some of our job growth we're 
going to have to do on our own. So a lot of these investments, both the 
private and the public investments in the economic plan, to create jobs 
should be adopted.
    So I am hoping that what happened this week will strengthen the 
resolve of the Congress to go ahead and pass the economic plan and to do 
it in short order so that we can go on to other things. We all, after 
all, have a lot of other things to do. We have to get the health care 
cost controls in and provide basic health care security to American 
families. We have to continue to deal with the transformation from a 
defense to a domestic economy and try to help people accommodate all 
those changes. We've got an enormous amount of work to do. We've got a 
crime bill we need to pass. We've got a lot of other things on the 
agenda. So we've got to get this economic plan passed.
    Q. Mr. President, you came here----
    The President. Go ahead. I'll take both of you. Just stand there. 
That's called splitting the difference.
    Go ahead.

Korean War

    Q. Mr. President, with regard to your forth-


[[Page 1042]]

coming trip to Korea, I wondered, first of all, do you have any personal 
recollections of the war? I know you were quite young when that 
happened. And secondly, knowing your views on the Vietnam war, is the 
Korean war one that you would have felt comfortable fighting in, where 
you were not so with Vietnam?
    The President. Absolutely. We did the right thing there, and I don't 
really think we had any choice, given the way it began. And I think the 
years and the aftermath have certainly validated the decision which was 
made to contest the forces of communism where we did and when we did.
    And yes, I do have quite a vivid memory. I remember mostly, even 
though I was very young, President Eisenhower's campaign and what he 
said about going to Korea. It's almost my first political memory, that 
campaign.
    Yes, go ahead.

Russian Nuclear Powerplants

    Q. Mr. President, we were told that you came to this summit with 
growing concerns about the condition of former Soviet nuclear 
powerplants that are deteriorating. Will you broach this personally with 
Yeltsin tomorrow? Is there another Chernobyl out there? In other words, 
how imminent of a crisis is this, and what's the West going to do about 
it?
    The President. Actually, we talked about it today at some great 
length. And there were two issues raised. The first is, President 
Yeltsin thanked the West for the assistance which has already been given 
to try to help them make those plants either safer or decommission them. 
What he called the first generation of their nuclear plants, they're 
actually trying to decommission them all, just take them out of 
commission so they won't run the risk of another Chernobyl. He said they 
had virtually completed that task. And he talked a little bit about his 
plans for energy and for nuclear power specifically. And I think the 
conversation was quite reassuring to the others who were there. I say to 
the others because I had talked about it a little bit with him before.
    The second thing that came up, which I was very impressed by, raised 
by President Mitterrand, was the question of whether the Russian plans 
for decommissioning these plants, as well as technical assistance to do 
it ought to be made available to other Republics of the former Soviet 
Union who had similar plants, and he agreed to do that. He said that if 
other Republics that had these kind of nuclear plants wanted the plans 
and wanted the technical assistance, he would be very happy to do it. 
And the rest of us said we'd be glad to support that. So that was the 
resolution that I thought quite good.

Unemployment

    Q. Do you have any concern that the jobs summit may turn to looking 
like it's a union-bashing event in that a lot of the work rules that are 
established in Europe that a lot of people think caused the problems 
are, in fact, union related?
    The President. They could, but there's a serious factual problem, if 
that's the total slant on it, which is the experience of Germany before 
the East was integrated into it. That is, if you split out East Germany 
from West Germany and you look just at the unemployment rate in West 
Germany for the last year or two, you'll see that's the only country in 
Europe with an unemployment rate as low as ours. Ours is too high. And 
their is too high, but theirs is much lower than all the other European 
countries. And yet they have very high costs in terms of mandatory 
vacations, in terms of mandatory worker retraining, in terms of general 
education investment in workers, in terms of mandatory health care 
coverage. Although their health care is much less expensive than ours, 
all employers have to undertake it.
    So it's a hard case to make in the case of Germany where they have 
rather high labor costs and manufacturing wage costs, higher than the 
United States on average, terrifically productive workers, and they have 
managed to keep their unemployment fairly low. Now their overall 
unemployment is higher because of the very high unemployment in East 
Germany.
    So we're going to have to be a little more sophisticated than that. 
I mean, there are some things that may add to unemployment or may 
prohibit job creation and some that aren't.

Bosnia

    Q. Mr. President, you said in your political communique that 
stronger measures could be taken against Serbia to end the war in 
Bosnia, but you didn't say what those measures were, nor under what 
conditions they might be taken. Given your inability to bring the 
Europeans along on your efforts before in the fighting there

[[Page 1043]]

regarding air strikes and lifting the arms embargo, why should we think 
that action will now be taken as a result of your communique?
    The President. The discussions that I had at this meeting about 
Bosnia were almost all, not all but almost all, one-on-one with other 
leaders. And frankly, I counseled against raising hopes unnecessarily 
and focusing more on what we might do and saying less until we were 
prepared to do something.
    I will say this: The one new statement that is in this policy that I 
am absolutely convinced that all the leaders of the other countries 
meant, that should have some impact on the situation, was the one 
proposed by Chancellor Kohl which says that, essentially, that if Serbia 
and Croatia carve up Bosnia in the absence of an international peace 
agreement to which the Bosnian Government freely subscribes, that the 
rest of us have no intention of doing any business with either of them 
if that happens.
    That would have a very serious detrimental economic consequence on 
both Croatia and Serbia. And it had never been said exactly like that 
before, particularly as it relates to Croatia. So I think that is the 
new part of this statement.
    Yes.

Japan

    Q. Mr. President, the last time an American President was in this 
city the Japanese Prime Minister said he pitied the United States. It 
was a remark you cited often in the campaign. In your talks with the 
Prime Minister did you detect any change in that attitude, or did you 
think there's still pity for the United States?
    The President. I did detect a change. But I have to tell you, I have 
tried very hard to move this dialog into a constructive frame of mind. 
When I spoke at Waseda University, I acknowledged that one of the 
reasons that there was such a big trade deficit with Japan in the 1980's 
was that we had such a huge Government deficit, we needed a lot of 
Japanese money to pay for our debt, to keep our interest rates down.
    In other words, I tried to go beyond the rhetoric and finger-
pointing of both sides. I also pointed out, however, that we have now 
had 10 years of high manufacturing productivity growth, that we really 
are the high quality, low cost producer of many goods and services, and 
that we have to recognize we have to have a new relationship.
    I think we should focus on things that are positive for both of us 
and be very, very firm about the need to change. But I don't sense a lot 
of ridicule here. And as a matter of fact, what I was hoping was that 
the Japanese would not be too concerned about all the changes going on 
in this country. A lot of the political changes are without precedent in 
the postwar era, post-World-War-II era. But they are the inevitable part 
of growing in a democracy and changing. And I sense a real sense of 
anticipation and openness here that's perhaps a little greater than it 
has been in past years and pretty uniformly throughout the people that I 
met and talked with.
    I must say a special word of appreciation to our host, Prime 
Minister Miyazawa, who, even though his party is facing elections, as 
you know, in just a few days, displayed a great vigor and willingness to 
discuss a lot of these issues and to try to bring them to closure, and 
clearly had to sign off on the market access agreement and had to make 
some changes to do so in his government's position.
    Thank you very much.

Note: The President's 22d news conference began at 8:10 p.m. in the 
garden of the U.S. Ambassador's residence.