    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1994, Book II)]
    [November 28, 1994]
    [Pages 2126-2128]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks on the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade
    November 28, 1994

        Thank you very much, Mr. Vice President. Jim Miller and Jim Baker,
    thank you for your moving and compelling remarks. Mr. Speaker, Leader
    Michel, Members of the Congress, members of the Cabinet, and to all of
    you who have come here from previous administrations and from different
    walks of life, proving that this GATT agreement not only tears down
    trade barriers, it also bulldozes differences of party, philosophy, and
    ideology: I thank you all for being here.
        We have certainly demonstrated today that there is no partisan pride
    of ownership in the GATT agreement. It is not a Republican agreement or
    a Democratic one. It is an American agreement, designed to benefit all
    the American people in every region of our country from every walk of
    life.
        Jim Baker spoke so eloquently about how this represents yet another
    historic choice for the United States in the 20th century. When we
    walked away from our leadership and engagement responsibilities, as we
    did after the First World War, the world has paid a terrible price. When
    we have attempted to lead, as we did after the Second World War, it has
    not only helped the world, it has helped the people of the United
    States. We saw the greatest expansion of the middle class in our country
    and prosperity for working families in our country in the years after we
    tried to put together a system that would preserve peace and security
    and promote prosperity after World War II.
        We have done as much as we could here at home to try to deal with
    the difficult and daunting economic challenges we face, to bring the
    deficit down, to shrink the size of the Government, to simultaneously
    increase our investment in education and technology and defense
    conversion. But we know that without the capacity to expand trade and to
    generate more economic opportunities we will, first of all, not be able
    to fulfill our global responsibilities and, secondly, not be able to
    fulfill our responsibilities to the American people.
        I'd like to address a third argument, if I might, just from my
    heart. It's been raised against this agreement and raised against

    [[Page 2127]]

    NAFTA. Jim Miller adequately disposed of the arguments that this is a
    budget buster and that this somehow impinges on our sovereignty. That
    isn't true. And he did a very compelling job of that. But let me say
    there is another big argument against this trade agreement that no one
    has advanced today but that is underlying all of this. And I saw it in
    an article the other day written by a columnist generally sympathetic to
    me. He said, ``There he goes again with one of his crazy, self-defeating
    economic ideas, pushing this GATT agreement, which is one more
    prescription for the demise of the lower wage working people in America,
    which is the reason the Democratic Party's in the trouble it's in today,
    doing things like this that just kill working people.''
        That is a wrong argument. But that is really the undercurrent
    against this GATT. The idea is that since we live in a global economy
    and there are people other places who can work for wages we can't live
    on, if we open our markets to them, they will displace our workers and
    they will aggravate the most troubling trend in modern American life,
    which is that the wages of non-college-educated male workers in the
    United States have declined by 12 percent after you take account of
    inflation in the last 10 years.
        Now, that has great superficial appeal. Why is it wrong? It's wrong
    because, number one, if we don't do anything, we'll have some
    displacement from foreign competition. But if we move and lead, we will
    open other markets to our products. And our Nation has gone through a
    wrenching period over the last several years of improving its
    productivity, its ability to compete. We can now sell and compete
    anywhere.
        When we did NAFTA, they made the same argument. What's happened? A
    hundred thousand new jobs this year. What's happened? A 500 percent
    increase in exports of American automobiles to Mexico. What's the
    biggest complaint in Detroit now? The autoworkers have too much overtime
    they have to do. If you think about where we were 10 years ago, that's
    what, at home, we call a high-class problem. [Laughter]
        Now, that is the problem we face in America. And the resentments of
    people who keep working harder and falling further behind and feel like
    they've played by the rules and they've gotten the shaft, they will play
    themselves out, these resentments, in election after election after
    election in different and unpredictable ways, just like they did in 1992
    and 1994. But our responsibility is to do what is right for those people
    over the long run. That is our responsibility. And the only way to do
    that is to open other markets to American products and services, even as
    we open our markets to them.
        Yes, we have to improve the level of lifetime training and education
    for the American work force. Yes, we have to deal with some of the
    serious, particular problems of the American economy. But in the end,
    the private sector in this country and the working people of this
    country will do their jobs if they have half a shot at the high-growth
    areas of the world. And what are the highest growth areas of the world?
    Not the wealthy advanced economies but Latin America, Asia, and other
    places.
        GATT, along with NAFTA and what we're trying to do with the Asian-
    Pacific countries and what we're going to try to do at the Summit of the
    Americas, this keeps America leading the world in ways that permits us
    to do both things we have to do at the end of the cold war, to continue
    to be engaged, to continue to lead, to work toward a more peaceful and
    secure and prosperous world, and at the same time to deal with the
    terrible, nagging difficulties that so many millions of American
    families face today.
        There is no other way to deal with this. There is no easy way out.
    There is no slogan that makes the problem go away. This will help to
    solve the underlying anxiety that millions and millions of Americans
    face and, I might add, millions of Europeans and millions of Japanese
    and others in advanced economies all around the world, and at the same
    time make the world a better place and the future more secure for our
    children.
        And we have to do it now. We can't wait until next year. We don't
    want to litter it up like a Christmas tree and run the risk of losing
    it. Every time I talked to a world leader in the last 6 months, they
    have asked me the same thing: When is the United States going to act on
    GATT? The rest of the world is looking at us.
        So we have a golden opportunity here to add $1,700 in income to the
    average family's income in this country over the next few years, to
    create hundreds of thousands of high-wage jobs, to have the biggest
    global tax cut in history, and to fulfill our two responsibilities, our
    responsibility to lead and remain engaged in the world

    [[Page 2128]]

    and our responsibility to try to help the people here at home to get
    ahead. We need to get on with it and do it now.
        Thank you very much.

    Note: The President spoke at 11:38 a.m. in the East Room at the White
    House. In his remarks, he referred to former Office of Management and
    Budget Director James C. Miller III and former Secretary of State James
    A. Baker III.