[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1995, Book I)]
[June 27, 1995]
[Pages 955-959]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks at the Opening Session of the Pacific Rim Economic Conference in 
Portland, Oregon
June 27, 1995

    Thank you very much. Mayor Katz, Governor Kitzhaber; I want to thank 
the people of Portland who have done so much to make us feel at home 
here; Secretary Pena for cosponsoring the conference; all the members of 
the Cabinet and the administration who get to do their jobs in Portland, 
in the real world today instead of back in Washington; President 
Ramaley; Congresswoman Furse; Governor Lowry. Let me also thank the 
Coast Guard for all the work that they have done to help us succeed 
here.
    Let me begin by saying I wanted some heated exchanges here today, 
but I have already overdone it. [Laughter]. This is a working 
conference. We will not be offended if you take your jackets off, roll 
your sleeves up. It would suit me if the gentlemen here present want to 
take your ties off. I won't be offended. I think you better stop there. 
[Laughter]
    I have really looked forward to this for quite some time. I had a 
wonderful experience when we came to Portland shortly after I became 
President for the timber conference. And a lot of ideas were generated 
out of that which clearly affected the work of our administration in 
terms of getting an aid package through Congress to help to pay for 
economic conversion in disadvantaged communities and a lot of other very 
specific things.
    When I was Governor, I used to go out across my State secure in the 
knowledge that even in every State there is no such thing as a State 
economy, that within each State the regions are dramatically different 
in their possibilities and their problems. And I do not believe that our 
National Government can have a sound economic policy without continuing 
to establish partnerships and to listen to people who live in various 
regions of the United States. And that's why we're doing this series of 
conferences today.
    I also think that, as all of you know, as a former Governor, that a 
lot of the best ideas in the country are not in Washington and don't get 
there unless you go out and find them. In preparation for this 
conference, I was given a remarkable biography of the remarkable Oregon 
Governor Tom McCall, that was written by a man that works for the 
Oregonian, Brent Walth, and now, according to--I know that no one in the 
press ever gets it wrong, so I'm sure this book was right in every 
respect. [Laughter] The most impressive thing about the book to me, 
maybe because of my own experiences with my own mother, was that once 
Governor McCall's mother was having trouble getting a hold of him, so 
she called the White House because she heard that the White House could 
get in touch with anybody, and she actually got President Johnson on the 
phone and said that she needed to talk to her son. And President Johnson 
called the Governor and told him to call his mother. [Laughter]
    Now, that is the kind of full-service Federal Government I have 
sought to bring to the American people. [Laughter] And that is the 
tradition we are trying to build on.
    As the Vice President said, we are here to, first of all review the 
facts about the region's economy, the good things and the bad things, 
the barriers to progress, and the possibilities. We are here to 
determine the impact of the present policies of our administration on 
that and to get as many new, clear, specific suggestions as possible for 
where we should go together.
    I think it is important to do these things because too often the 
further you get away from the grassroots in America, the more 
theoretical and the less practical the debates become. And that is 
especially true now because we're at an historic watershed period in 
American history. We won the cold war, but we no longer have a common 
enemy and a common way of organizing ourselves and thinking about how we 
should relate to the rest of the world.

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    So yesterday I went to San Francisco to the 50th anniversary of the 
United Nations, to try to talk about why we, more than ever, should be 
working with other countries in partnerships to advance our values and 
our interests and our security.
    And today I say to you that a lot of our economy was organized 
around our responsibilities in the cold war. And today we know it has to 
be organized around the realities of a global economy, the information 
age, and the fact that for many decades, before the end of the cold war, 
we financed our continuing leadership in that war and our needs at home 
with massive deficits, which lowered savings rates, lowered investment 
rates, and put us into some very difficult circumstances, which mean 
today that we're in the second decade in which most Americans are 
working a longer work week than they were 20 years ago for about the 
same or lower wages and at which all these wonderful changes that we 
find thrilling and exciting, the global society, the rapid movement of 
money and information, the constant downsizing of big organizations, but 
the explosion of new ones--because even though we have downsizing of big 
corporations, in '93 and '94 both we set new records for the 
incorporation of new businesses--all these things in the aggregate are 
quite exciting. But if you're just someone caught up in a very new 
world, who has to worry about paying a mortgage and educating your 
children and taking care of your parents' health care, they can be very 
threatening as well.
    And over and over and over again we hear all over the country people 
say, ``Well, I know these numbers look good, I know we've got almost 7 
million new jobs, but I'm still worried about losing mine. It may be 
that the economy is growing, but I haven't gotten a raise. I know we've 
got the best health care in the world, but I lost my coverage at my job 
last year. I know we have to grow the economy, but how can we do it and 
preserve our precious environmental heritage so that America as we know 
it will still be around for our grandchildren?''
    These questions are coming at us. They also come from the other way. 
They say, ``Well, we're caught in a bind; I know we have to preserve the 
economy, but I've got to feed my family tomorrow. I know that we have to 
advance the environment and I'm worried about other people's economic 
interests, but what about mine?''
    In other words, this is an interesting time in which the clear, 
simple, monolithic way we used to look at the world, the cold war 
abroad, constant economic progress at home, steady, slow, certain 
resolution of our social difficulties, all those things are kind of out 
the window. And there are more possibilities than ever before, but it's 
pretty confusing for folks out there. And a lot of people are genuinely 
scared and worried. And what we have to do is to chart a new course 
based on our fundamental values.
    I personally believe that the debate that has gone on in Washington 
is understandable, given the national confusion and frustration, but 
it's way too extreme. We're debating things that I thought were resolved 
70 years ago. To me, the issue is not, would we be better off if the 
Government solved all our problems? Nobody believes that can be done 
anymore. But it is certainly not, wouldn't we be better off if the 
Government did nothing but national defense, cut taxes, and balance the 
budget tomorrow without regard to consequences?
    The clear thing it seems to me is we ought to be asking ourselves, 
how do we have to change our Government to get the kind of policies that 
advance the American dream, that grow the middle class, shrink the under 
class, enhance our security and our quality of life, deal with the 
issues of the day in practical fashion? What kind of partnerships do we 
need?
    That's the way I tend to look at the world, probably because I was a 
Governor before I became President. But it's also the thing I think that 
will work. You heard what the Vice President said: In the last 2 years 
we have cut the deficit by a trillion dollars over 7 years; we have seen 
a lot of new jobs. Even in some rural counties in Oregon, the 
unemployment rate has gone down, notwithstanding the difficulties caused 
by the timber issues.
    We have tried to expand trade in unprecedented ways. We have had 
more than 80 new trade agreements, the big ones like NAFTA and GATT and 
others on specific things that permit us to sell everything from 
Washington apples to California rice to software and cellular telephones 
in Japan for the first time.
    And I believe it is clear to everybody that what we have to focus on 
is reducing the deficit, expanding trade but also increasing the 
capacity of the American people to make the most of their own lives and 
enhancing our own security. So that's why I have also focused on the 
need

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to invest more in education, training, and research and the need to 
dramatically improve the ability of the Government to do its job, 
because if we're going to cut back and cut back and cut back it becomes 
even more important what we do spend money on.
    That's why we try to support things like the Oregon initiative. 
That's why we've given now 29 States permission to get out from under 
Federal rules to try their own hand at reforming the welfare system, to 
move people from welfare to work. That's why we abolished another 16,000 
governmental regulations the other day. And these are things that are 
profoundly important to all of you.
    As we look ahead, I just want to say a couple of things and then I 
want to hear from the panel. We're going to have a big debate this year 
about what should be done about our budget deficit. I believe it's 
important to balance the budget. I believe it's important to have a 
clear path to get there. And I think it's important for two reasons. One 
is we never had a permanent structural deficit in the United States 
until 1981. Now, we ran a deficit all during the 1970's because of the 
oil price problems and because we had something called stagflation. And 
those of you who were of age in those years understand what happened to 
our economy. So conventional economic theory called for us to try to 
keep stimulating the economy a little bit in those years.
    But we never had a big, permanent deficit until 1981, when there was 
a sort of unspoken agreement between the major party leaders in 
Washington. The Republicans didn't want to raise taxes to get rid of the 
deficit and the Democrats didn't want to cut too much spending, and 
besides that, both of them knew that economic growth in America fueled 
by investment and productivity had reached a very low level and the only 
way to keep the economy going was through a big deficit. But we have 
paid a terrible price for it.
    Meanwhile, the private sector is much more productive now, much more 
competitive. And we cannot afford to continue to run our economic 
business with a permanent deficit, in my opinion. On the other hand, 
there is a right way and a wrong way to do it. An economic study 
recently done by the Wharton School of Business in Pennsylvania pointed 
out that if we reduce the deficit too fast and specifically analyze the 
Senate proposal, that it could bring on a recession, increase 
unemployment to 8.6 percent, and basically undermine what we want to do.
    That's why I proposed balancing the budget over 10 years, doing it 
in a way that increases investment in education, medical research, and 
technology, not reduces it; cuts everything else in the nondefense area 
about 20 percent across the board; and reduces Medicare and Medicaid 
inflation more moderately than the Republican proposals, so that we 
don't have to cut services primarily to elderly people who don't have 
enough money to live on as it is.
    In order to get to my budget, you have to have a much smaller tax 
cut; focus it on education, childrearing, and the middle class; and take 
10 years instead of 7. But this is the sort of debate I think we ought 
to be having, in other words, not some big theoretical debate about 
what's good and evil in some theory but how is this going to affect the 
American people?
    Same thing--I'll just give you one other example about the 
environment. We'll have a chance to talk about this today. It seems to 
me what we ought to be focused on here and what you all--most of you at 
least--said you wanted when I came out here to the forest conference is, 
how can we guarantee long-term sustainable development that preserves 
the natural resources, that makes people want to live here in the first 
place, but enables the maximum number of people to make a decent living 
in the most diverse and acceptable ways to sustain the environment?
    In Washington, the debate often gets so theoretical that you got 
some people saying, ``I think it's a very nice thing if the 
environment's preserved, but the Government would mess up a one-car 
parade, so we ought to get out of it anyway.'' The other day we had a 
congressional subcommittee actually vote to repeal the ban on offshore 
oil drilling for every part of America--Florida, New Jersey, California, 
everybody--no analysis, no nothing. Why? It was pure ideology. Yesterday 
they reversed the vote after they heard from the people. But you see 
what I'm saying. In other words, it's--one of the things that I really 
want to come out of this is a practical sense of what we should be 
doing.
    Finally, let me say, there's one other big issue in the news today 
that affects the Pacific Northwest, and I want to mention that. That, of 
course, is the question of our trade talks with Japan. First, let me say 
there's nobody who's

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done more than our administration to try to open opportunities for 
Americans to sell in Japan. And I have also kept a very open door to 
Japanese products in America. We are, as I mentioned earlier, we're 
selling apples, rice, software, cellular telephones, computer technology 
previously prohibited by cold war legislation, all these things we're 
selling in Japan and the rest of Asia, many of them for the very first 
time.
    I supported the GATT trade agreement. I supported NAFTA. I believe 
in this. I understand that Japanese cars are made now in Oregon and sent 
back to Japan for sale. I know all that. I know that Washington State is 
the most trade-sufficient State in the United States in dealing with the 
Pacific Rim. This is the future I want.
    But you also have to understand in the context of this negotiation, 
we still have a huge and persistent trade deficit with Japan. More than 
half of it is in autos and auto parts. We have a trade surplus in auto 
parts with the rest of the world because we are the low-cost, high-
quality producer of auto parts in the world, but we still have a $12.5 
billion trade deficit with Japan, partly because they make carburetors 
in Japan and sell them for 3 times as much in Japan as they do here.
    The luxury car issue you've heard talked about, that's the sanction 
that I propose, unless we can reach an agreement here, of tariffs on 
luxury cars--those cars are selling--made in Japan--selling for $9,000 
more there than here. We have to seek fair trade. No matter how many 
jobs are created by a country's trade, if they have a $100 billion trade 
surplus by constantly closing the economic channels of access, more is 
lost than gained. And this is not good for Japan. They're awash in cash, 
but they can't have any economic growth. They have no inflation, no 
growth, and they're moving toward negative interest rates in the 
Japanese economy. The average Japanese working person looks like they 
have a huge income, but they can't afford housing and their consumer 
costs are almost 40 percent higher than Americans for virtually 
everything. So they are paying a terrible price.
    I want to tell you, the people of the Pacific Northwest, I am not 
trying to launch a new era of protectionism, but we have tried now for 
two or three decades to open this market, and this is the last major 
block to developing a sensible global economic policy. If the United 
States is going to lower its deficit in ways that promote growth and 
raise incomes, then the rest of the world has to also make their 
economic adjustments because we can't deficit-spend the world into 
prosperity any more. Others have to do their part as well.
    That is what this is about. The bottom line is we want to open the 
markets for American products. And we will take action if necessary in 
the form of sanctions. We hope it will not be necessary. We hope it will 
not have an adverse effect in the short run on anyone. But over the long 
run, if we're going to build the kind of global economic system we want, 
everyone must change.
    Meanwhile, I will get back to basics here. It is not enough for this 
country to produce impressive economic numbers. It must be manifest in 
the lives of the people of America. So I ask you to give us your best 
thoughts about where we are and where we're going and what you think we 
should do to renew the American dream and to maintain our leadership in 
a new and exciting world that is full of opportunities and challenges.
    Thank you very much.

Note: The President spoke at approximately 9:45 a.m. in Smith Memorial 
Center at Portland State University. In his remarks, he referred to 
Mayor Vera Katz of Portland; Gov. John A. Kitzhaber of Oregon; Judith A. 
Ramaley, president, Portland State University; and Gov. Mike Lowry of 
Washington.

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