[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1993, Book I)]
[July 11, 1993]
[Pages 1059-1060]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks to the American and Korean Chambers of Commerce in Seoul
July 11, 1993

    Really, I came here mostly to listen. And I'm very delighted to be 
here. I'm glad to have this opportunity. You may know that the Secretary 
of State and the Secretary of Treasury and I met with the U.S.-Japan 
Chamber of Commerce in Tokyo the other day. We had about 375 people 
there, and it was very interesting. We had a roundtable, and they had a 
panel, sort of like you. And I just listened and asked them what we 
could do to help.
    Let me just make a couple of observations. First of all, this has 
been, I think, from an economic point of view, quite a successful trip 
for the United States. The G-7 summit produced an agreement by the G-7 
members on market access which would, if incorporated into the final 
General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, would be the biggest reduction 
in tariffs in 7 years and have a huge market-opening impact on 
manufactured goods throughout the world. I also think it will give some 
real impetus as we go back to Geneva to complete the Uruguay round this 
year. So I feel good about that.
    The second thing the G-7 did was to adopt a $3 billion, 18-month 
grant and loan assistance package to Russia, anchored in a $500 million 
fund to help to privatize more of their state-owned industries more 
rapidly. That comes just after the United States Export-Import Bank has 
approved $2 billion in credits for energy operations.
    So I think we're really moving quite well in our partnership with 
Russia. I feel much better about the stability of the political climate 
and the capacity for economic change than I did even after the election 
there. There's been a lot that happened that is basically quite 
encouraging.
    Then thirdly, at 2 a.m. in the morning on the day that I left, the 
United States and Japan reached agreement on a framework for changing 
our trading relationships, which is quite encouraging. We committed to 
work toward some specific agreements in specific areas that will have 
some real targets, measurable progress for change in objective ways, and 
commits our relationship to a results-oriented basis for the first time 
in a way that I think is quite good. So this was a good trip.
    Back home, let me just observe that the problems in America are 
well-known, and they are basically faced by every wealthy country in the 
world today. We have modest growth; we're behind where we ordinarily 
would be in job

[[Page 1060]]

growth after the bottom of a recession, and the incomes for most working 
people have remained pretty stagnant for more than a decade. And it's 
all part of this global slowdown that you're all very familiar with.
    The positives are that, because of the progress of the deficit 
reduction package, we've got long-term interest rates down now to a 20-
year low, tens of billions of dollars being generated back into the 
economy through refinancing of homes and business loans, about a million 
new jobs coming into this economy in the first 6 months of this year as 
compared with about a million in the previous 3 years.
    So, even though the job engine is still slow, it's picked up 
markedly in the first 6 months of this year. And I think, clearly, 
largely because of the low interest rates and the refinancing, so that 
we're shifting not so much from debt to equity but from high-cost debt 
to lower cost debt, and the difference is being freed up for some new 
investment. And we can work that for a year, or maybe a year and a half, 
because there's so much accumulated high-interest debt in the American 
system.
    The strategy we are seeking to follow at home is one that brings the 
deficit down, increases investments both public and private, and the 
generation of new jobs and new technologies addresses some of the real 
distortions in the American economy, such as the exploding cost of 
health care and the fact that we spend 30 percent more on it than 
anybody else does, and attempts to develop policies for defense 
conversion, technology, and trade which will hook us into the global 
economy in a better way.
    We also tried to achieve an agreement at GATT toward more 
coordination of our economic policies to produce higher levels of global 
growth. And there was some modest success. For the first time in a 
decade, GATT did not criticize America's trade--I mean, budget deficit. 
They complimented us for trying to get it down, which is nice.
    But we also got an agreement, I think, to continue to work with the 
Europeans and the Japanese, but there are domestic political 
considerations which limit what they can do. The Germans are bringing 
their interest rates down, but they're also tightening up their economy. 
The Japanese are stimulating their economy, but not as much as we wish 
they were. Nonetheless, I think on balance things are going in the right 
direction at home, and the G-7 was a big, big plus for the concept of an 
open trading system and for the promise of future growth.
    Now, having said that, obviously there are a lot of differences 
between words that are spoken by people in political life, and even that 
are put down on paper, and the way things operate in fact. So I'm here 
today as much as anything else for an hour now just to listen to you, to 
ask you how we can help to support your mission here. America had a 20-
year high in productivity increase in the last quarter of last year. 
There are many, many areas of the world now where in products and 
services we are the high-quality, low-cost producer. And there are all 
kinds of opportunities for us around the world that we need a good 
partnership between the United States and the private sector to achieve.
    And so unless we know what you're thinking and what we're supposed 
to do, it will be hard to do that. And that's why the Secretary and I 
and all the folks on the wall are here today, and the rest of this hour 
belongs to you.

Note: The President spoke at 10:40 a.m. at Yongsan Army Base.