    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1993, Book II)]
    [October 28, 1993]
    [Pages 1850-1854]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at the Wall Street Journal Conference on the Americas in
    New York City
    October 28, 1993

        Thank you very much, Peter. And thank you for that wonderfully
    understated observation that your editorial positions don't always agree
    with mine. [Laughter]
        I am delighted to be here tonight on a matter on which we both
    agree. I thank you for sponsoring this meeting, and I was glad to see
    you and my longtime acquaintance Al Hunt, who invited me. I would say
    ``friend,'' but it would destroy his reputation in the circle in which
    we find ourselves. [Laughter] He invited me here only because he had
    been replaced by Alan Murray, and therefore he knew he could not
    guarantee me one line of good press for accepting this invitation.
    [Laughter] I thank you, I thank William Rhodes and Karen Elliott House
    and all the others who are responsible for this event.
        Ladies and gentlemen, I will get right to the point. When we
    concluded the side agreements with Mexico and Canada in the NAFTA
    negotiations and actually had a proposal to take to the Congress, I
    really believed that the cause was so self-evidently in the interests of
    the United States that after a little bit of smoke and stirring around,
    that the votes would rather quickly line up in behalf of what was
    plainly in our short and long term national interests. It is no secret
    that that has not happened.
        Since I have always prided myself on being a fairly good reader of
    the political tea leaves, I have pondered quite a bit about why we are
    engaged in a great struggle that I think is very much worth making and
    that I still believe we will win. But why has it been so hard? And what
    can all of us who believe that NAFTA ought to prevail and in a larger
    sense believe we need to succeed in getting a new GATT round by the end
    of the year and in promoting a continually more open world trading
    system, what is it that all of us can do to try to give new energy, new
    drive to this vision that we all share for the post-cold-war world?
        Anyway, let's begin by why it turned out to be so hard. I think it
    is far more complicated than just saying that the labor movement in
    America and the Ross Perot-organized group had a lot of time to bash
    NAFTA without regard to what would ultimately be in the final agreement.
        It is far more complicated than that. And it is at root a reflection
    of the deep ambivalence the American people now feel as they look toward
    the future. So that in a profound way, at this moment in time, NAFTA has
    become sort of the catch-all for the accumulated resentments of the
    past, the anxieties about the future, and the frustrations of the
    present. Irrelevant are the specific provisions of the agreement, which
    plainly make better all the specific complaints many of the people
    opposing NAFTA have about our relationship with Mexico.
        I mean, plainly if you just read the agreement, it will cause the
    cost of labor and the cost of environmental compliance to go up more
    rapidly in Mexico. Plainly, if you just read the agreement, it reduces
    the requirements of domestic content for production and sale in Mexico
    in ways that will enable Americans to export more. Plainly, the main
    benefit to the Mexican people is opening the entire country in a more
    secure way to American investment, not for production back to the
    American market but to build the Mexican market, to build jobs and
    incomes and an infrastructure of a working market economy for more of
    the 90 million people who are our largest close neighbors.

    [[Page 1851]]

        So this opposition is in spite of the plain terms of the agreement.
    It is also in spite of the fact that plainly NAFTA could lead the way to
    a new partnership with Chile, with Argentina, with Colombia, with
    Venezuela, with a whole range of countries in Latin America who have
    embraced democracy and market economics. And I say this to my friends
    who are not from Latin America but are from other nations here tonight:
    We see this not as an exclusive agreement but as part of the building
    block of a framework of continually expanding global trade.
        So this is not about the letters, the words, the phrases, the terms,
    or the practical impact of this agreement. That is not what is
    bedeviling those of us who are trying so hard to pass this agreement.
    This agreement has become the symbol, as I said, for the emotional
    frustration, anxieties, and disappointments of the American people,
    feelings that are shared, as we now see from the results of the recent
    Canadian elections and other wealthy countries, the results of the
    recent elections in France, manifest in the low growth rates in Europe
    and the low growth rates in Japan and the recent elections there.
        What we are seeing is a period of global stagnation which comes at
    the end of several years in which global growth did not necessarily mean
    more jobs or higher incomes in wealthy countries. We are living in a
    time of great hope where there's more democracy, more adherence to
    market economics, when the wonders of technology are providing new areas
    of economic endeavor and millions of new successes every year in all
    continents, but where still there is so much frustration for those who
    cannot figure out how to make these changes friendly to them. So that in
    America, for example, having nothing whatever to do with NAFTA or our
    trade with Mexico, we are now at the end of a 20-year period when hourly
    wage workers have seen their incomes remain basically stagnant while
    their work week has lengthened; when income plus fringe benefits have
    gone up modestly, but mostly that's been inflation and wage costs; when
    for the last several years, we have seen more and more working people
    subject to the restructuring of industries, which means that for the
    first time since World War II, people who lose their jobs in America now
    normally don't get the same job back. They get a different job, after a
    longer period of time, usually with a smaller company, usually paying a
    lower wage with a weaker package of fringe benefits.
        Now, to be sure, though, a lot of good things are happening.
    Manufacturing productivity in this country is growing very rapidly and
    has been for several years. We are recapturing part of our own
    automobile market, for example, this year. It's quite astonishing to see
    what's happened to the American manufacturers' share of the American car
    market. That's just one example. American productivity in the service
    sector is beginning to come back. And if you give me a couple of years
    to work with the Vice President on this reinventing Government, we'll
    give you more productivity in the Government sector, too, which will
    have a private sector impact.
        But the plain fact is there are an awful lot of people in this
    country who feel that they are working harder, caught on a treadmill,
    not moving up, who feel quite insecure and uncertain.
        If you look at what has happened, basically, we live in a world
    where money management and almost all but not all technology is mobile;
    where productivity and prosperity are largely a function of the skills
    of the work force, the level of appropriate investment and
    infrastructure, and in the private sector, the organization of work and
    the system for maintaining ever new and different skills, and the
    systems that support work and family, the systems that support expanding
    exports, and the systems that support dealing with sweeping economic
    change. To whatever extent any nation with a high per capita income
    lacks those factors, people will suffer. And there will always be some
    dislocation simply because of the rapid pace of change.
        What happened today in America is we have a whole lot of people who
    have dealt with this not very well, who feel that they have worked hard
    and played by the rules, and who now are the seed bed of resentment
    welling up against NAFTA, not because of anything that's in NAFTA but
    because it's the flypaper that's catching all the emotion that is a part
    of the runoff of the last 10 or 12 years, in many cases 15 years, of
    experience with the global economy where the United States has not made
    all the investments we should have made, has not made all the changes we
    should have made, has not made the adjustments we should have made.
        Therefore, what I have tried to do, and what I tried to do in my
    speech to the AFL-CIO in San Francisco recently, was to argue that we
    needed in America to face the future with confidence, to believe that we
    can compete and

    [[Page 1852]]

    win, not to run away and not to pretend that these global changes had
    not occurred, but also to argue that we ought to have a certain base
    level of security in this country so we could deal with the future.
        That's why I supported the family leave law, because most people who
    are parents also work. So we shouldn't make it impossible in America for
    a person to be a good parent and a good worker. I believe it adds to
    worker productivity even though it's a little extra cost for employers.
        That's why I think we have to become the last advanced nation to
    provide health security to all working people, because people are going
    to lose their jobs in this economy. It's a dynamic economy; one that
    creates jobs in as many different ways as ours does will also have
    people losing jobs all the time. And if we want that dynamism to be
    there, there has to be a bedrock of security underneath it. People
    cannot feel, when they go home tonight to face their families, their
    children over the dinner table, that if they have lost their jobs, they
    have put their children's health in danger. So we need to build that
    underneath.
        That's why, next year, we're going to propose radically changing the
    unemployment system in this country to a reemployment system where,
    instead of just getting benefits until they run out, you immediately
    begin a job search, an analysis of the jobs in the given area, the areas
    of job growth, and a retraining program immediately, because most people
    will not get their old job back. And that's what the unemployment system
    is premised on. It is taking taxes from employers and dragging down the
    economy under a false premise because it's no longer relevant to the
    world we live in.
         What has all that got to do with NAFTA? If we had all this in
    place, we'd have a more secure work force, and it would be easier to
    argue to them we must face the future with confidence. In that
    connection I would like to ask those of you here who are Americans who
    are employers here to do one or two things tonight. Number one, I ask
    that you tell your own employees and publicly commit that you will
    support a rich, full, and adequate job retraining program for the people
    who will be displaced because of this agreement. This is a job winner
    for America. We're going to get more jobs than we lose, but some will
    lose.
        One of the more sophisticated opponents of this agreement said to me
    the other day, ``I know you will create more jobs than you'll lose. But
    the people who get new jobs won't feel as much joy as the people who
    lose them will feel pain.'' Interesting argument. If you were on the
    losing end, you might agree. What do we owe those people? A far better
    training and retraining program than we have, a far more aggressive
    reemployment program than we have. You should support that so that the
    people who are at risk will feel that we are moving forward into the
    future together. It is very important.
        The second thing that I ask of all of you is this, that you ask your
    employees who support this to contact their Members of Congress. I've
    had as many Republican as Democratic Members of Congress that I am
    lobbying say to me, ``I want to hear from the people who work for the
    employers, not just the employers. I want to hear from people who know
    that their jobs will be made more secure, not less secure, if NAFTA
    passes.'' That is very important.
        We have all these wavering Members of Congress now, many of them
    moderate Republicans and moderate to conservative Democrats, who come
    from districts where they have both labor union members asking them to
    vote against this and people who are part of the old Perot organization
    asking them to vote against it, and they just want some other real
    voters to ask them to vote for it. They just want to know there's
    somebody in their district who understands that this is good for
    America.
        The last thing that I ask you to do is to lift this debate up in the
    last 3 weeks. I'm going to travel this country, intensify my contacts
    with the Congress, and try to get as many other people enlisted in this
    battle as possible. But we have to realize that the people of America
    can view this through their personal spectrum, but the Members of
    Congress must be statesmen and stateswomen. They have to realize what is
    at stake for America in this. We have to decide whether we are going to
    face the future with confidence and with a belief that we can compete
    and win, and with genuine respect for the heroic changes undertaken by
    our neighbors in Mexico to the south and other heroic changes being
    undertaken by neighbors to the south of them, and engage them in
    friendship and partnership, or whether we're going to turn away from all
    that and pretend that we can really do well in a world that we no longer
    try to lead.
        You know, the psychological aspect of this

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    whole debate is absolutely fascinating to me. The element of
    isolationism that I see coming into some of our foreign policy debates
    is equally present in the NAFTA debate: ``I've got to worry about
    myself, and I don't have time to worry about anybody else.'' The problem
    is, in the world we're living in, worrying about yourself is worrying
    about somebody else. We're too connected. We don't have that option. And
    if you think about this in more personal terms, every time an
    individual, a family, a State, or a nation faces a crisis brought on by
    change, you have only two options. You can sort of batten down the
    hatches, hunker down, and hope it will go away, and that works about one
    time in 100; or you can take a deep breath, take your licks, figure out
    what's happening, and embrace the future with zest. That's what America
    has done. That's why we're still around.
        This is a real test of our character as a country, whether we
    believe that we can compete and win, whether we believe that partnership
    is good global economics and good American economics, and whether we
    really understand that we have to make our people see the rest of the
    world as an opportunity, not a threat.
        So I ask all of you to think about that. To our friends here who
    have operations in both the United States and Mexico or other parts of
    Latin America, I ask you to explain to Members of Congress that nothing
    in this agreement makes it more attractive to invest in Mexico to sell
    in the American market. But this agreement does make it more attractive
    for Americans to invest in Mexico to help build Mexico. No longer will
    the maquilladora line be some magic line in the sand. Now you can invest
    in Mexico City and help to build a strong market of millions of
    consumers who can be even better partners with the United States. I
    promise you, a lot of people who will vote on this agreement and carry
    its fate still do not understand that elemental principle.
        You need to say if you have experience in both countries that if you
    don't pass this agreement, everything that you don't like about the
    present situation will get worse. And if you do pass it, everything you
    like will get better.
        These sound like simple things, but I tell you, I've been to so many
    of these meetings where all of us stand up who agree with one another,
    and it's like we're all preaching to the saved, as we say at home. Well,
    there's lots of folks out there who aren't saved yet, but they are
    willing to listen. And the Members of the United States Congress need to
    understand what the consequences of passing this are and what the
    consequences of not passing this are, not only in Mexico but throughout
    Latin America.
        The changes in Mexico, political and economic, in the last several
    years, have been truly astonishing, of historic proportions. To continue
    that, they need a partner, and it ought to be us. And in the long run,
    even though I know some of our friends in Asia don't like this agreement
    now, it is in the best interest of the Asians; it is in the best
    interest of our friends in Europe; it is in the best interest of the
    world trading system for Latin America and the United States of America
    and Canada to grow more, to increase their wealth, diversify their
    activities, so that we can embrace our full share of responsibility for
    a new fully integrated global trading system.
        I think, whether we like it or not, that NAFTA has acquired a
    symbolic significance, perhaps out of proportion to its narrow economic
    impact, not only for all those who are ``agin'' it but for all of us who
    are for it, too. We have to face the fact that it is, in our time, the
    debate which enables us to make a statement about what kind of country
    we are and what kind of partners we are going to be and what kind of
    future we are going to make.
        And I tell you, I believe we will win in the end because I have seen
    Congress time and again go to the brink with the easy choice and make
    the hard one because they knew it was the right thing to do for America.
    But they need help. The two things you can most do to give that help is
    to say, ``I am an employer. I am a taxpayer. I know that people who are
    disturbed by this, who are dislocated by this agreement should have
    access to the finest training program this country has ever provided.
    And I will support that. I will insist that the President and the
    Congress take care of the people who lose out.''
        And the second thing you can do is, for goodness sakes, to tell
    people how it works. We cannot let the legitimate grievances, the honest
    fears, the well-founded anxieties of people who are not doing very well
    in this economy stop them from doing better tomorrow. We cannot let the
    American people act in ways that are against their self-interest.
        As I said when I was in San Francisco talking to the AFL-CIO, the
    truth is that this agree-

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    ment will create more jobs for labor union members in the United States.
    We have to assert those facts, and we can prevail if we do.
        Now, we have, as you know, about 2\1/2\ weeks, a little more, before
    the scheduled vote. That is an eternity. The Congress wants to do the
    right thing. I am convinced, about a week or 10 days ago we passed what
    I always think of as the first threshold in a big struggle in the
    Congress: I believe we won the secret ballot battle. That is, I think if
    there were no recorded votes we could ratify NAFTA tomorrow. And that is
    a very good sign. It is also not ignoble for people to listen to their
    constituents.
        What we have to do now is move from winning the secret ballot battle
    to winning the recorded battle. We can do it. We can do it. But I ask
    you to remember that all those people that are hanging fire, all the
    undecided voters in the Congress, are carrying with them the accumulated
    fears, resentments, and anxieties of a lot of Americans who did the very
    best they could and it still didn't work out for them.
        And I ask you to at least go far enough with those folks to say,
    ``If anything happens to you, we're going to give you a chance to learn
    a new skill. We're going to give you a chance to change.'' As I tell
    people anyway, the average 18-year-old is going to change jobs eight
    times in a lifetime anyway. We might as well get used to it. The average
    60-year-old worker in America is going to have to get used to learning a
    new skill. They might as well learn to enjoy it. It will make life a lot
    more interesting.
        NAFTA can be the beginning of our decision to be a secure nation in
    a global economy; to lead, not follow; to reach out, not hunker down. We
    owe it not just to our friends in Mexico and Canada and Latin America,
    not just to the rest of the world, we owe it to the tradition of
    America. And I believe we will do it. But it's going to take all hands
    on deck. And I came here tonight to ask for your help, as much as you
    can do in every way that you can, for the next 3 weeks.
        Thank you very much.

    Note: The President spoke at 8:23 p.m. in the Empire Room at the Waldorf
    Astoria Hotel. In his remarks, he referred to Peter R. Kann, chairman
    and chief executive officer, Dow Jones and Co., Inc., and publisher, the
    Wall Street Journal; Albert R. Hunt, executive Washington editor, and
    Alan Murray, Washington bureau chief, the Wall Street Journal; William
    R. Rhodes, vice chairman, CITIBANK; and Karen Elliott House, vice
    president international, Dow Jones and Co., Inc.