[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1994, Book I)]
[July 5, 1994]
[Pages 1195-1198]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks on the Upcoming Economic Summit
July 5, 1994

    Thank you very much, Secretary Brown, Ambassador Kantor, Secretary 
Reich, Deputy Secretary Talbott, National Security Adviser Lake, 
National Economic Adviser Bob Rubin, to my Special Assistant for Public 
Liaison, Alexis Herman, and so many others who have worked hard to make 
this upcoming trip a success. I'd like to also recognize and acknowledge 
the presence of the members of the diplomatic community who are here 
today, as well as the leaders from business and labor, Government, and 
academia, many faces of our national interests that seek to advance our 
international economic policies.
    It is fitting that we should gather here at the moment of my 
departure for the G-7 meeting, as well as our trips to Latvia and Poland 
and Germany, fitting that we should be here because it was here last 
year that I signed into law the North American Free Trade Agreement. 
NAFTA was more than a trade agreement; because of the circumstances 
surrounding its debate, it was a defining moment in our modern history. 
It was ratified only after a principled and momentous debate over how 
the United States should enter into the post-cold-war era. Would we 
hunker down, turn away, and ultimately, in my view, suffer a slow and 
steady decline in our living standards, or would we, instead, take a 
different path? Would we build new walls where old walls had crumbled, 
or would we embrace eagerly the challenges of a new and rapidly changing 
economy? Our vote on NAFTA was our answer to that question. We chose to 
embrace the world. It is for us now to shape what kind of world we will 
live in.
    This moment in history demands that we master the rapid, even 
dazzling pace of economic change and ensure that our people have the 
confidence and skills they need to reap the rewards that are there for 
them in a growing global economy. That is the purpose of my Presidency. 
And the mission to Europe on which I embark tonight is simple: to create 
jobs and a world of prosperity.
    We are in the midst of a rare moment of opportunity. If our people 
have the confidence, the vision, the wisdom to seize this moment, we can 
make this a new season of renewal for Americans and for the rest of the 
world as well.
    At the G-7 summit is Naples and in visits to Latvia, Poland, and 
Germany, we will seek to find ways to create jobs and better prepare our 
people to fill them, to develop the infrastructure for the new global 
economy, to commit to sustainable development for all the nations of the 
Earth, to continue the economic, the political, the security integration 
of the new democracies into the family of free nations.
    Even as we speak and meet here, powerful forces are shaking and 
remaking the world. That is the central fact of our time. It is up to us 
to understand those forces and respond in the proper way so that every 
man and woman within our reach, every boy and girl, can live to the 
fullest of their God-given capacities.
    A global economy, constant innovation, instant communication, 
they're cutting through our world like a new river, providing both power 
and disruption to all of us who live along its course. The cold war has 
clearly given way to a new birth of freedom in Central and Eastern 
Europe. And this means enormous opportunities. But citizens find 
themselves buffeted by changing tides, cut loose from their moorings, 
facing stagnant incomes, shrinking job prospects, social problems of 
staggering dimensions. Stubborn unemployment is especially endemic in 
Europe. And here in the United States, our incomes are still largely 
stagnant, even when the economy is growing.

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    Here in America we're preparing for this new world by putting our 
fiscal house in order, dramatically cutting our deficit, by aggressively 
opening our efforts to increase access to foreign markets. We're helping 
our working people adapt and prosper in the global economy by creating a 
system of standards for world class education and a better system for 
moving our young people from school to work when they don't go to 
college and better opportunities for people who do go to college and, 
finally, a system of lifetime learning and reemployment for those who 
lose their jobs. And we must work to give them health care security as 
well.
    From the first day of preschool to the last day before retirement, 
every American will have to continue to be a learner. And that is the 
lesson that every American must be taught from the first day of 
preschool to the first day on the job to the last day of retirement. 
Lifetime learning is not an option. And so our responsibility is to be 
able to say to every American, whatever the economy brings, you will be 
prepared to make the best of it.
    Even as we sow the seeds of our own renewal, we also must recognize 
that what happens around the world affects us here at home. We must have 
global economic growth, because when global markets grow, our exports 
boom, and that means higher paying jobs here in America. If workers in 
other nations embrace protectionism, that means a race to the bottom in 
which all will lose. If the nations of Central and Eastern Europe fall 
backward into chaos or authoritarianism, then legitimate security needs 
will soak up an ever greater part of our budget in the future.
    Our challenge is the challenge of all advanced nations. We will only 
act most effectively when we act together. We began to do that a year 
ago in Tokyo at the first G-7 summit of my Presidency. For years, the G-
7 did less than it could, but in the past year we've replaced a decade 
of drift with a real commitment to action. We closed the deal on the 
world trade talks that were stalled for years. And with our help, the 
once-crippled Russian economy is struggling to its feet. We have shown 
together that bit by bit and year by year, the decisions made at these 
G-7 meetings really can make a difference.
    For a decade, our out-of-control budget deficit robbed us of the 
standing to press our partners to act. Indeed, year after year at these 
meetings our friends and allies hammered us about the deficit and 
claimed that they were unable to listen to our suggestions about what 
they could do to promote global growth. Well, now, instead of having the 
biggest deficit in the G-7, we have among the smallest.
    With the largest deficit cut in our history, including $255 billion 
in spending cuts, we now have the standing and the credibility to speak 
and to be heard. We're on the brink of passing a new budget, I might 
add, which with new spending cuts, including the first reduction in 
aggregate discretionary domestic spending in 25 years, will give us 3 
years of deficit reduction in a row for the first time since Harry 
Truman was the President of the United States.
    Now, we have to use this newfound strength to address how to give 
the citizens of our Nation and all other nations the confidence they 
need to prosper in uncertain times. We have to move from coping with 
crises to planning for prosperity. In other words, we have to lay the 
foundation for the 21st century economy, one in which change will be the 
order of the day, and the real question will be whether change is our 
friend or our enemy.
    Our first job is to create jobs and to develop the high-skill work 
force to fill them. It may seem obvious, but many, many of the advanced 
economies of the world have been unsuccessful in creating jobs for 
several years now. In Tokyo, we agreed on a common strategy to spur 
expansion. And today, growth in the G-7 is 2\1/2\ times faster than it 
was a year ago. America has powered that expansion. With 40 percent of 
the annual income of the G-7, we have produced fully three-quarters of 
the growth and almost 100 percent of the new jobs. Our exports are 
rising faster than those of any other G-7 nation. We will continue to do 
everything we can to expand on this record by expanding trade.
    Last year when we ended 7 years of global gridlock, leading to the 
signing of the largest trade pact ever with the Uruguay round of GATT, 
we knew we were on the right track. Now, we have to lead the world in 
ratifying it.
    These trade agreements are good for our country. Thanks to NAFTA--
you heard what Secretary Brown said--let me just mention one thing that 
was of particular concern during the debate. This year we are exporting 
automobiles to Mexico at 5 times the rate of a year ago. If you look at 
what NAFTA did and then you

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compare the potential of GATT, you get a sense of the importance of 
ratification here in the United States and in the other countries. GATT 
means a $744 billion tax cut over the next decade for the industrialized 
countries and in half a million new American jobs alone. Congress must 
pass the agreement this year. And all the G-7 nations must work to 
implement it in good faith.
    But we know also that we have to do more. At the Detroit jobs 
conference in March, for the first time ever, finance and labor 
ministers of all these countries began a serious conversation about the 
economic well-being of working people. For all the advanced countries, 
new competition from rapidly developing nations places an even greater 
premium on the skills of their work force even as it places greater 
pressures on wages of their workers.
    We've got a lot to learn from each other. We can learn a lot from 
the German apprenticeship and health care systems, from the French child 
care system, from the way the Italians in the northern part of Italy 
cooperate in research and development and marketing among small 
businesses. We have things to learn from every nation in the G-7. Every 
nation is addressing these qualities.
    I have talked to the Japanese about it. I have talked to the British 
about it. I have talked to the Canadians about it. I was so impressed to 
see the Prime Minister of Britain carrying around a little plastic card 
which had the goals for British education in the year 2000. And it 
sounded very much like the legislation that I signed in the Congress 
just a few weeks ago.
    We know we can learn from one another. We know that the United 
States because of its adaptable work force has been able to create more 
jobs. But we also know that every nation has got to work harder to 
create even more jobs and increase incomes.
    In Naples we will be pressing forward with this common agenda. And 
let me say that, to the best of my knowledge, no group of advanced 
nations ever in all of human history has ever tried to work together in 
common on these problems, the problems of ordinary citizens that lie 
behind the complex statistics we read about in the newspapers every day.
    Our second goal in Naples will be to build a new infrastructure for 
this new economy. In the 21st century, there must be a nerve system to 
carry the ideas, the information, the investments of the new economy. 
These will require new technologies and certainly the building of what 
the Vice President always talks about in the information superhighway. 
We must create this infrastructure and use it to increase productivity 
so that we can expand overall growth within the limits of our planet's 
resources. We will begin to lay those plans in Naples.
    Third, we will discuss the tinderbox issues of global population and 
the environmental crisis. In the coming years, prosperity and security 
will depend more than ever on progress on the environment and 
sustainable development. We must stabilize population growth, because 
poverty is both the cause and an effect of exploding population. 
Otherwise, we will find ourselves with a worsening shortage of the food 
to feed future generations, a shortage of the environmental sustenance 
needed for them to live in peace, instead of closing up camp and moving 
across national borders, and a shortage of the capacity to create jobs 
to sustain the people of the 21st century.
    Fourth, we will continue to work with Russia and the other new 
democracies to make the difficult transition from command economies to 
free markets, from repressive regimes to open societies. In Tokyo, 
Russia was in dire economic straits. We mustered the international 
community to provide emergency aid for reform. Already $26 billion of 
the promised $43 billion has been disbursed. The Russian Government 
deserves enormous credit for staying on the path of reform, especially 
in these last several months. And slowly but surely, reform is working. 
Today, the Russian budget deficit is a smaller percentage of its income 
than the deficit in some other European countries. Russian monthly 
inflation has dropped to single digits. And half of all Russian workers 
are now employed in the private sector. Life in Russia is still 
difficult, but now her people have tangible reason to hope. And in 
Naples, for the first time, President Yeltsin will join our ranks as a 
full participant in discussing political issues.
    The G-7 will strive to bring the economies of Central and Eastern 
Europe fully into the world economy with trade and long-range reform. We 
want those nations to hold to the path of economic reform and democracy, 
for those are the only true routes to prosperity and peace. But the 
prospect of renewal will only be complete if Europe is whole, if the 
young democracies are fully integrated into security

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and into the society of that continent. That's why we have worked so 
hard to create NATO's Partnership For Peace, to link peaceful nations 
committed to respecting one another's borders, from Vancouver to 
Vladivostok. They must believe that this difficult journey is 
worthwhile.
    To that end, I have the great honor of visiting Riga, Latvia, to be 
the first American President to touch free Baltic soil. I will visit 
Warsaw, where a free people is coming into its own, where the Polish 
economy is now growing faster than any other economy in Europe, and 
eager to be a full partner in our deliberations for the future.
    And then I will end the trip in Berlin, where for 50 years, our 
Presidents made pilgrimages to proclaim our commitment to freedom. It 
will be a privilege to represent all of you as the first President to 
visit that city since that glorious day when the Germans united to 
topple the Berlin Wall. There I will witness the end of a proud chapter 
in our own history, as the last American brigade comes home from Berlin. 
As the last detail on freedom's frontier returns, we must remember again 
the dire consequences when America withdrew from the world after World 
War I. So, these troops will leave Germany and Europe because their 
mission is complete, but some 100,000 others will stay, working through 
NATO to promote peace and to secure the Continent. And we will stay 
through our commitment to trade and political integration.
    A month ago when I represented our Nation in Europe, it was on a 
journey of remembrance, to honor the generation that saved the world for 
freedom in World War II. Tonight I return to Europe on another mission, 
to join others in renewing the world that the generation of World War II 
has left to us.
    It will serve us to remember that when World War II was won, 
profound uncertainty clouded the future. Europe and Japan were buried in 
rubble. Their peoples were weary. People did not know what to expect or 
what would happen. But because of the vision of the people who were our 
predecessors here in the United States and the other allies, new 
institutions were created and the path that was followed after World War 
I was abandoned and instead the world was embraced with optimism and 
hope and a determination to make the world work, not just for Americans 
but for our friends and allies and, indeed, our former foes as well. It 
is that spirit, that idea, which must animate us today.
    We have had a good year in America since the last G-7 meeting, but 
we are nowhere near where we need to be. We are simply moving on the 
path that will take us. And I want all of you to know that as long as I 
am President, I will continue to work for these things: an integrated 
and strong security partnership in Europe, the right kind of political 
partnership, and continued expansion of our economic frontiers. I hope 
you will continue to support that direction.
    Think of the world you want the children in this country to live in 
20, 30, 40 years from now. It is within our power to make it, but we 
must make the right decisions today. This trip is an important part of 
that decisionmaking. I hope you will wish me well, but more importantly, 
I hope you will support these efforts here at home and, as you can, 
around the world.
    Thank you, and God bless you all.

Note: The President spoke at 2:08 p.m. at the Mellon Auditorium.