    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1994, Book II)]
    [December 8, 1994]
    [Pages 2160-2161]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    [[Page 2160]]

    Remarks on Signing the Uruguay Round Agreements Act
    December 8, 1994

        Thank you very much, Mr. Vice President. As usual, you did a
    generous and magnificent job of recognizing the contributions of all
    these people who made this day possible. You did, however, leave one
    very important person out. If you hadn't gone on television in that
    national debate on NAFTA and refuted the theory of the giant sucking
    sound--[laughter]--I'm not sure we would be here today. And we thank you
    for that.
        I thank the Members of Congress who are here and those who are not
    who have been acknowledged. I thank the members of our administration. I
    am so proud of all of them. I want to say a special word of thanks to
    Secretary Espy for helping us resolve these terribly difficult
    agricultural issues, without which we would not have been able to get
    this agreement. I thank Mickey Kantor and Rufus Yerxa and John Schmidt
    and John Emerson, all the people who worked on our team. I thank the
    business community, a bipartisan group, a remarkably diverse group, for
    standing up and being counted and working hard on this and our other
    trade initiatives.
        I thank the Vice President for what he said about trade. In the last
    2 years we've not only had NAFTA and GATT, but we have done our outreach
    to Asia through the Asian-Pacific Economic Cooperation group. We've had
    two meetings of the leaders of the APEC countries now. We have reached a
    new agreement with Japan which I believe is a very good one, and we
    continue our efforts there. And this evening I am leaving for the Summit
    of the Americas in Miami, which Mr. McLarty and others have done so much
    work on to make a success.
        Two days ago when I regrettably accepted his resignation, Secretary
    Bentsen said that history would show that the economic future of our
    children and grandchildren will be more secure because of the
    politically difficult decisions taken in the last 2 years. I appreciate
    his saying that. He had a lot to do with them, and he's earned a well-
    deserved rest.
        But I want to emphasize again how important I think this trade issue
    is and why I think it's important for the people who are not on the
    program today, the people who are working in our factories and working
    in our offices and trying to raise their children and having a difficult
    time.
        When this administration and our economic team took office, we were
    rightly concerned about economic problems gripping every advanced
    country in the globe and certainly affecting the United States, the
    problems of low growth, high unemployment, stagnant incomes, declining
    benefits for working people, increasing insecurity. It seemed to me then
    and it seems to me now that we had to have a serious, disciplined
    strategy to reverse these trends; that if we continue to see increasing
    inequality and loss of opportunity, not among the working and the
    nonworking but among people who are all working full-time and longer
    workweeks today than they were working 20 years ago, that it is going to
    be very difficult for us to preserve the essence of what America is, the
    whole core of the American dream that people here who work hard and obey
    the law and play by the rules are going to be given a chance to do
    better, going to be given a chance to build a better world for their
    children.
        There were those, 2 years ago, and certainly there were those even
    in this debate on GATT, who believe the only way we can do that is to
    try to create a world that used to be. I wonder sometimes about that
    world that used to be. I remember what Will Rogers used to say: ``Don't
    tell me about the good old days. I lived through them. They never was.''
    [Laughter] Well, that's somewhat true, but it is also true that for the
    last 10 or 15 years we have been struggling with longer workweeks,
    declining security, increasing inequality, and a lot of people who
    literally have worked harder for less.
        Some say the answer is to try to just hunker down within our
    borders. That is clearly not an option. No country can escape the global
    economy, and the greatest, largest, most powerful country in the world
    cannot escape the global economy. We must lead it in a direction that is
    consistent with our values, consistent with our interests, consistent
    with what is necessary to keep the American dream alive. That's really
    what GATT is all about.

    [[Page 2161]]

        We've worked hard here, these folks and a lot of our friends from
    the Congress--and a lot of you in this room have helped us--to try to
    bring the deficit down, to try to reduce what I call yesterday's
    Government, to try to reduce destructive regulation and unleash the
    forces of creativity and enterprise, to try to increase investment in
    the education and training of our work force and in the technologies of
    the future. But no matter what we do, unless we can expand the markets
    for America's products and services, we will ultimately fail in our
    economic mission.
        Yes, it is true that one of the reasons for stagnant wages in the
    United States is intense competition in our own markets and in other
    markets from people who work for wages our folks couldn't live on. That
    will happen if there is never another trade agreement in the history of
    the United States. The reason NAFTA was important, the reason GATT's
    important, the reason our outreach in Asia is important, the reason this
    Summit of the Americas is phenomenally important, and why I wanted to be
    in this building today with the fine Secretary General we're very proud
    to see in this leadership position, is because America cannot and will
    not succeed and we will never restore stability to the lives of the
    working people of our country until we have more folks buying what we
    sell, until the work of our people is rewarded more. And that can only
    happen if we have a fair and increasingly open world trading system that
    allows the free market to work and rewards the most productive people in
    the world.
        There are not many of them here today, maybe, but the real victors
    in GATT are the autoworkers, the accountants, the engineers, the
    farmers, the communications workers, the people who will now have a
    chance to be more rewarded for their labors. Ultimately, that is what
    the purpose of any country is about. So I am very, very happy to be
    here.
        All of you know what's in this agreement. Let's never forget what's
    behind it, and let's never forget, too, that this is ultimately a
    victory for a couple of simple ideas, that people ought to be able to
    relate more and more and more every year now to people beyond their
    borders, to work in harmony. The end of the cold war imposes more than
    relief. It gives us a responsibility to finally take advantage of the
    interconnections that exist in the world today. It's a victory for the
    idea that America can lead in the 21st century, that we need not fear
    competition, that we want our neighbors to do better than they have been
    doing, and when they do better, we will do better--old-fashioned, simple
    ideas.
        We must never run away from the world. We must go into the 21st
    century convinced that the only way to preserve the American dream is to
    be involved with the rest of the world, to be willing to compete, to be
    determined to win, to be serious about overcoming our problems, but to
    realize that the only way you can ever do it is to see the opportunities
    that are plainly there.
        I want to thank every Republican and every Democrat here. I thank my
    predecessors for the work they did on this treaty. I thank, especially,
    Presidents Carter, Ford, and Bush for their lobbying here for the votes
    we needed at the last minute. But most of all, I am very pleased to see
    in recent days evidence in public opinion surveys that for the first
    time in history, the American people see trade as more of an opportunity
    than a threat. That is, of course, the ultimately critical factor,
    because we all serve at the sufferance of the people. They have to
    believe in themselves and their future and in an open world. And I think
    that all of you who fought these battles, and especially this last
    debate on GATT, played a major role in persuading the American people
    that the future is bright, that our best days are ahead, and that we are
    going forward with confidence. That ultimately may be the most important
    significance of the bill I am now proud to sign.
        Thank you very much.

    Note: The President spoke at 9:30 a.m. at the Organization of American
    States Building. In his remarks, he referred to Cesar Juairia, Secretary
    General, Organization of American States. H.R. 5110, approved December
    8, was assigned Public Law No. 103-465. The proclamation of December 23
    implementing the Uruguay Round Agreements and the related memorandum of
    December 23 on acceptance of the World Trade Organization Agreement are
    listed in Appendix D at the end of this volume.