[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1997, Book II)]
[September 10, 1997]
[Pages 1148-1152]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks Supporting Renewal of Fast-Track Trading Authority
September 10, 1997

    Thank you very much, Mr. Vice President, members of the 
administration. Mr. Lang, thank you for coming all the way from Iowa. 
And Susan, thank you for coming all the way from California; all else 
fails, you can give speaking lessons. [Laughter]
    I also would like to thank the Members of Congress who have come. I 
see Senator Moynihan and Senator Baucus and a significant delegation 
from the House, including Congressmen Matsui and Fazio who have often 
been on the forefront of our trade issues. It's nice to see former 
Chairman Gibbons out there and former Congressmen Carr and Anthony. 
There may be--and former Congressman, our Ambassador to Mexico, Jim 
Jones. There are a lot of other former Members perhaps here, but I 
appreciate all of you being here to support this endeavor today.

[[Page 1149]]

    These stories that we have heard, one from a farmer, one from a 
high-tech small-business person, make it clear that as we approach a new 
century and a new millennium, we live in a time of profound change and 
immense possibility. We have worked, as the Vice President said, to take 
our Nation and to lead the world to the edge of this new era in this new 
economy, to build on a strategy of eliminating the deficit, increasing 
investments in our people, and expanding our exports, and to do it in a 
way that would bolster America's world leadership for peace and freedom 
and prosperity around the world.
    It is true that we have made significant progress with the balanced 
budget agreement in completing the business of balancing the budget, in 
making education our genuine top priority, and investing in our people. 
And it is a good thing that we are moving forward. But we must also 
recognize that for all the dramatic expansion of trade in the last 4\1/
2\ years, for all the expansion in our economic opportunities and the 
enhancement of our world leadership, the world markets are changing so 
rapidly and growing so quickly, there, too, we must take new action to 
move forward.
    I'm asking the Congress to renew the President's traditional 
authority to negotiate trade deals, to open more American markets for 
goods and services from our country, and to restore the partnership 
between the Congress and the President in the trade arena necessary to 
keep our economy strong and our leadership strong.
    The Vice President said this before, but I want to reemphasize this: 
We are enjoying now an unemployment rate in the Nation of under 5 
percent, with over 13 million new jobs in the last 5 years. We have 
stable inflation at the lowest level in 30 years. And it appears that 
after a very good year last year, our economy this year will also grow 
in excess of 3 percent.
    Now, how do we intend to continue to do that if we have 4 percent of 
the world's people and we already have 20 percent of the world's income? 
We have to sell to the other 96 percent of the world's people, 
especially when we know that the developing economies are projected to 
grow in Latin America and Asia at almost 3 times the rate of the mature 
economies over the next 15 to 20 years. And if we do it right, by the 
way, it will make the world a much better place because 10 to 15 to 20 
countries will move from the ranks of being very poor countries into 
being countries with sustainable incomes for their own people, making 
them better democratic partners, more likely to be positive contributors 
to the world of tomorrow, less likely to be trouble spots that will 
command America's attention to try to keep something bad from happening 
when we ought to be working with them to make good things happen.
    So this is very much the way of the future that America must lead 
toward. We have worked for 4\1/2\ years--we had over 220 new trade 
agreements. I compliment our Trade Ambassador, Charlene Barshefsky, and 
her predecessor, Mickey Kantor. They have worked very hard. Most 
recently, we had an information technology agreement which will generate 
hundreds of billions of dollars in income.
    We now estimate that of the important growth we've enjoyed in the 
last 4\1/2\ years, almost a third of it came because of our expansion of 
trade. During this period American has once again become the world's 
number one exporter, our largest producer of automobiles, the world's 
largest agricultural exporter, the world's largest producer of 
semiconductors. From the farms of our heartland to the high-tech firms 
of the future, business is booming in this country. And from specialty 
steel to telecommunications, America leads the world in a very 
competitive global marketplace.
    But I emphasize again, this is not a static situation. In order for 
us to continue to create jobs and opportunities for our own people and 
to maintain our world leadership, we have to continue to expand exports. 
We have to use every tool we can get to open foreign markets to our 
goods and services; we have to continue the fight for open, fair, and 
reciprocal trade; we have to continue to stand against unfair trade 
practices; and we have to act now to continue this progress to make sure 
our economy will work for all the American people.
    Congress, therefore, must renew the President's traditional 
authority to negotiate trade agreements. That is what we are here to say 
to the United States, and that is what we are here to ask you to help us 
to do.
    Again, let me say this is something that I could not have 
appreciated the day I took the oath of office the first time back in 
1993. This is about more than economics. It is very much about 
economics, and it is very important, but it is about more than 
economics. It's about

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whether other countries will continue to look to the United States to 
lead to a future of peace and freedom and prosperity, about whether the 
world will be growing together instead of coming apart, about whether 
our economic ties will lead to cultural ties and ties of partnership, or 
whether we will be viewed as somehow withdrawn from the world, not 
interested in leading it, and therefore not nearly as influential as we 
might otherwise be for the causes in which we so deeply believe.
    Every President of either party has had this authority since 1974 
for a very good reason. It strengthens our ability to break down trade 
barriers and unfair trade restrictions in areas where we already lead 
and where our future lies, such as agriculture, telecommunications, 
medical equipment, environmental technology, and the creative power of 
our entertainment and our software. Every single trade agreement we will 
reach will tear down barriers to our goods and services, and that is 
good for America. And I think it is worth emphasizing again.
    Virtually without exception--as far as I know, without any 
meaningful exception--the nations with whom we will negotiate agreements 
have markets that are more open than ours. When we talk about sectoral 
agreements, in all these sectors our markets are more open--the markets 
are more closed than ours. And in these sectoral agreements, all these 
sectoral agreements involve areas where we are highly competitive, where 
other markets are more closed than ours. In all the global agreements we 
would negotiate, we will be dealing with areas where we are already 
highly competitive. This is a good thing for us economically. And it is 
absolutely critical for our world leadership.
    Now, just look at this information technology agreement. It's a 
good, representative agreement, even though it's larger in its scope 
than some others we'll be able to negotiate. We reached it with 42 other 
nations last December to unshackle trade on $500 billion in computers, 
semiconductors, and telecommunications equipment. It's the equivalent of 
a $5 billion cut in tariffs on American products exported to other 
nations, and it will lead to thousands and thousands and thousands of 
new high-wage jobs in America. It will also bind us, in one of the most 
critical areas of human endeavor, more closely to other countries with 
whom we want to share a common future in a positive way.
    The second thing I'd like to emphasize again is that we want to 
concentrate on the fastest growing markets in the world, in Latin 
America and in Asia. These markets are going to go 3 times faster than 
our own and than Europe's in the next decade. They will become very 
important to our economic future, whether we do this or not. The 
question is, will it be a positive or a negative importance? Their 
economies are on a fast track. They are not waiting for us to pass a 
bill. And we have to face that.
    The third point I'd like to make is that if we don't have this 
authority, we will leave the field to our competitors, to break down 
more trade barriers to their own products at our expense. Since 1992, in 
Latin America and Asia alone, our competitors have negotiated over 20 
agreements that don't include the United States. For example, now that 
Canada has negotiated a trade agreement with Chile, every major economy 
in this hemisphere has duty-free access to Chilean markets--every major 
economy but one, ours. I don't think that's a very good deal for 
American business or American workers.
    Finally, let me say again, if we want to spread prosperity and open 
trade to support peace and democracy and freedom and free markets, we 
must do this. Other countries look at this decision in the United States 
as a decision about whether we continue to lead the world toward freedom 
and openness and partnership. And make no mistake about it, it is about 
more than economics, but increasingly our foreign policy and our 
economic policy are merging. And what is good for us economically, when 
it is good for other countries economically, advances the cause of 
freedom and prosperity and free markets and stability and partnership.
    It is a remarkable thing that for the first time in history, more 
than half the world's people live under governments of their own 
choosing. When I was a boy growing up, I think most people could not 
have imagined that. Now, unfortunately, many of us take it for granted. 
I spend a great deal of time every day reviewing the situation in the 
world, as you might imagine, and I can tell you, you cannot take it for 
granted. It is not certain that 10 years from now or 15 years from now 
or 20 years from now, more than half the world's people will still live 
under governments of their own choosing. The governments have to be able 
to deliver the

[[Page 1151]]

goods. They have to be able to show the benefits of freedom and 
democracy. And the partnerships we have, as I said again, that are very 
much in our own interest, by helping them to elevate their countries 
will also stabilize freedom and secure a better future.
    Now, let me also say that those of us who support open trade have to 
acknowledge that the benefits and burdens of the global economy, both in 
this country and in other countries, will not automatically fall equally 
upon all shoulders. They never have, in any market, and they never will. 
We must acknowledge that the possible effects of global trade on some 
communities or businesses or workers will not be positive in the short 
run, even though we know that this agreement will be overwhelmingly 
positive for the vast majority of Americans in the short run and in the 
long run. But because of that, I have worked very hard for the last 5 
years to give more and more Americans the tools to benefit from change, 
to take the changes that are going to occur anyway and make something 
good happen, especially giving Americans access to more and to better 
education.
    We have to make sure that all Americans can reap the fruits of the 
economic growth we have enjoyed as a nation. But we cannot do that by 
stepping off the path of economic growth. We can only do it by giving 
all Americans the tools to participate in that growth.
    And let me make one final point. As we continue to expand our 
economy here at home by expanding our leadership in the global economy, 
I do believe we have an obligation to support and to encourage labor 
standards and environmental protections abroad, indeed, around the 
world. Our commitment to workers' rights and environmental protection 
are, and have long been, reflections of our fundamental values. They 
also have been a benefit to our own economy, and they will become more a 
benefit to our economy as we move into a 21st-century world where 
maintaining a clean environment will create more high-wage jobs for 
working people, so that social responsibility and economic markets will 
merge in their common interests and objectives.
    We will continue to seek even further adherence around the globe to 
fundamental worker rights and environmental protection, as we have for 
decades. We do not accept the fact that free trade should lower our 
standards to meet those of other countries. Indeed, our goal should be 
to persuade other countries to build on the prosperity that comes with 
trade to lift their own labor standards, their own people up and to make 
a commitment to economic growth with environmental protection, a 
commitment we must reaffirm this very year. Trade need not pull 
standards down; it must lift them up. And we can do that if we'll work 
at it.
    Ladies and gentlemen, for more than 50 years now, we have had a 
bipartisan consensus on the importance of expanding trade for the 
American economy and creating a global trading system as a part of 
America's leadership for peace and freedom. Our prosperity, our 
leadership, our values, all have been richly rewarded by the efforts we 
have made. And whenever we have abandoned this course, we have done so 
at our peril, and our interests and our values have paid for it. It is 
now clearly more important than ever that we get a new consensus on 
building a new global economy for the 21st century. I am committed to 
consulting with the Congress to make sure that this fast-track 
legislation receives the full, bipartisan support it deserves and the 
American people expect.
    If the historic budget agreement we reached in July taught us 
anything, it is that we actually can, and indeed, we must, pull together 
for the good of the American people and the future of our country. Our 
trade policy should not be about politics; it ought to be about 
prosperity and building a new economy for the new millennium. Our 
workers are the most productive in the world. They can outcompete anyone 
in the world, and we have to give them that opportunity. It's also about 
our leadership and the world we want for our children.
    Finally, let me say this is very important, especially to the 
millions and millions of working families, because if we do not continue 
to expand markets for our country's products and services, there is no 
way, in a world where other economies are growing faster than ours, we 
can maintain our standard of living with 4 percent of the world's people 
and 20 percent of the world's wealth. The people with the biggest stake 
in this struggle are those who go to work every day at jobs all across 
America, jobs of all kinds.
    I know there are heartfelt concerns that expanding jobs in exports 
and trade could wind up hurting some Americans. That's why we're moving 
to shape the changes we face. Change is certain; progress is not. But 
walking away

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from this opportunity will not create a single job. No one suggests we 
should throw up greater barriers in our own marketplace. Walking away 
from this opportunity will only leave the inequalities that are there 
now, that do not work to the advantage of either American businesses or 
American workers. Backing away from this responsibility will not make 
the environment better. It won't clean up a single toxic waste site. 
Turning away from the effort will not expand our economy, enhance our 
competitiveness, or empower our workers.
    I say again, the global economy is on a very fast track to the 21st 
century. The question is whether we are going to lead the way or follow. 
Today, this country is at the pinnacle of its influence. Our economy is 
the strongest in the world. We have been very, very blessed. This is not 
the time to shrink from the future. This is the time to lead to the 
future. We have a special responsibility because we are doing so well 
now--a responsibility to think of how our children will do, a 
responsibility to think of how others around the world will do, a 
responsibility to think of how this world ought to look like and ought 
to work like in 20 or 30 years.
    So I say, the future will not wait for us, but we can shape it. I do 
not intend to sit on the sidelines, and I'll bet you, when the time for 
counting comes, the Congress won't either.
    Thank you very much, and God bless you.

Note: The President spoke at 2:28 p.m. in the East Room at the White 
House. In his remarks, he referred to Eugene Lang, corn and soybean 
farmer from Grinnell, IA; and Susan Corrales-Diaz, president and chief 
executive officer, Systems Integrated, Inc.