    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1998, Book I)]
    [April 16, 1998]
    [Pages 575-579]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks to Business and Community Leaders in Santiago
    April 16, 1998

        Thank you very much, Mr. President, Mr.
    Fernandez, Mr. Riesco, Mr. Mayor, ladies and
    gentlemen. First, let me thank President Frei for the warm welcome that
    Hillary and I and

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    our entire delegation feel with our trip to Chile. I have looked forward
    to it for a long time.
        To those of you who wonder about the commitment of the United States
    to this relationship, I would just note that in the audience here I am
    joined by the Secretary of State, the
    Secretary of Commerce, National Security
    Adviser, our Trade
    Representative, our National Drug
    Control Policy Director, my Special Envoy
    to the Americas, the Director of
    the Small Business Administration, the Director
    of OPIC, and five distinguished Members of the
    United States Congress, Congressmen Hamilton, Hinojosa, Rodriguez, Levin, and
    Portman.
        We are glad to be here, and together we hope we will be able to
    persuade you by our presence, if not by my words, of the importance that
    we attach to our growing relationship with Chile.
        I'm told that when this city was founded in 1541, it was called
    Santiago del Nuevo Extremo--Santiago of the New Frontier. On the verge
    of the 21st century, Santiago is again on that new frontier. It is a
    window through which we can see over tomorrow's horizon to a future of
    freedom and broadly-shared prosperity.
        You are helping to build that future. The Summit of the Americas
    that President Frei will host this weekend is
    helping to build that future. Never before have the Americas been so
    united in values, interests, and goals. We have to keep that in mind as
    there are bumps along the way or inevitable differences as all human
    beings will have.
        Chile and the United States are working hard to seize the promise of
    our shared values and interests and visions. The President has already outlined all the things we have agreed to
    do together today. No one can fail to be impressed by the economic
    performance of this great nation. Sound, consistent policies have
    produced high growth, low inflation, more savings, less poverty. Chile
    stands at the vanguard now of a new revolution of freedom and enterprise
    that is indeed embracing all of Latin America. Last year Latin America
    and the Caribbean combined had an average growth rate of more than 5
    percent, with the lowest inflation rate in 50 years.
        There has been an explosive increase in commerce within our
    neighborhood, and more than goods are flowing across our borders.
    Between 1991 and 1996, the number of minutes for telephone calls from
    the United States to South America tripled. In that same period, the
    number of planes that left Miami for Central and South America increased
    by over 50 percent. More and more young people from our countries are
    studying in each other's schools and colleges, enriching their lives and
    our cultures. Thanks to the new spirit of openness, capital flows across
    our borders are absolutely massive.
        I remember it was just a month after our first Summit of the
    Americas in Miami in 1994 that the Mexican peso crisis struck. It shook
    the entire region. I'm sure some of you have a vague memory of it.
    [Laughter] But instead of closing their doors, Mexico, and indeed, all
    of Latin America, deepened their reforms. Now Mexico is back and is our
    country's second largest export market.
        In general, Latin America has grown so strong that I think even a
    lot of you are probably surprised that this region has weathered the
    shock of the Asian financial crisis as well as the region has. It is a
    great tribute to those of you who have worked for and fought for and
    lived by smart, sensible, disciplined policies over the last several
    years.
        Now, of course, we know that there is more to do. Just last December
    our Finance Ministers committed here in Santiago to tighten bank
    supervision, fight money laundering, and to provide new credit to the
    smallest entrepreneurs--the kind of people that President Frei just mentioned, that we met with a few moments ago in
    San Miguel. But every outside observer knows that Latin America has
    found its voice, its confidence, and its well-earned seat at the
    international table. The United States is delighted by the success of
    Chile and, indeed, all our neighbors. Our futures are joined like a cord
    that gains its strength from the many threads that are tightly
    intertwined.
        Today, more than 40 percent of America's exports go to our
    hemispheric neighbors. Our exports in this region are growing more than
    twice as fast as anywhere else in the world. With three of our four top
    energy suppliers in the Americas, we can literally say that this
    hemisphere fuels our growth. Your prosperity lifts ours, just as a
    healthy United States economy helps you. The better you do, the better
    off we will be in our increasingly interdependent world.
        The United States, therefore, will continue to work for more
    cooperation and more integration. At our summit this weekend, we'll take

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    the next step toward open trade in the hemisphere by launching
    comprehensive negotiations for the free trade area of the Americas, as
    we committed to do 4 years ago in Miami. All of you know, as the
    previous speakers have said, it will create opportunities for producers
    throughout the Americas; it will create new jobs and higher living
    standards for our workers; it will create better buys for 800 million
    consumers; it will help to lock in market reforms and democratic
    triumphs throughout the hemisphere.
        And let me also say that it won't be the first time that the United
    States has launched its own involvement in negotiations of this kind
    without fast-track authority. Before they're done, we'll have it and it
    will work.
        Let me also say, I am especially pleased that for the very first
    time we are creating a special committee to expand the role of
    environmental and labor groups in our trade deliberations. Those who
    want to protect and enhance the role of working people in the global
    economy, and those who remind us that we dare not sacrifice our
    children's planet for present profits should be heard. Their voices and
    their concerns should shape, but cannot reverse, our emerging
    partnership. We can grow the economy and not only preserve but indeed
    improve the environment. We can have prosperity and indeed enjoy more of
    it if we assure that it is broadly shared.
        The benefits for America's workers and companies and consumers for
    expanding trade should make, in my judgment, a clear case for fast-track
    authority. I thank you for the support you have given it. I will
    continue to work hard with Congress to build support for fast-track. But
    let me say something to you that I am convinced of. There is not a
    majority in either House of the United States Congress for a return to
    misguided protectionism. What there is in the United States and in our
    Congress is what you have in every country in Latin America: there is a
    continuing and vibrant debate about how we're going to grow in the
    global economy in a way that gives everybody a chance to be a part of
    that growth and in a way that recognizes values that may not be built
    into today's market systems, like environmental preservation. And what I
    am doing my best to do is to persuade our Congress that walking away
    from what I believe to be a colossal opportunity with Chile and with the
    rest of our partners in Latin America is neither the best way to lift
    labor standards or to preserve the environment. But the debate is worth
    having.
        So be patient with us. You may decide to have the debate yourselves
    before it's over in some other forum which may prevent some decision
    from being made as quickly as you would like.
        Winston Churchill once said that democracy was absolutely the worst
    system of government except for all the others. [Laughter] He also once
    said in a moment of frustration with our country that the United States
    invariably does the right thing, after having exhausted every other
    alternative. [Laughter] So just stay with us; we'll get there.
        But we must recognize, let me say again, that the combined force of
    globalization and technology have given us all economies in which a
    rising tide does not necessarily lift all boats. People without the
    right education, without training, without skills, without bargaining
    power can be stranded on yesterday's shore. And remember, some Latin
    democracies have not been that way all that long, and we cannot afford
    to have conditions in which ordinary people--the kind of people the
    President and I met with today--lose faith in the ability of this
    system, not only to produce wealth in the aggregate but to actually
    change their lives and to give their children better lives than they've
    had--if they work.
        So that--we have to continue to see the enhancement and broadening
    of democracy and free enterprise together. As we encourage more business
    contracts, we must also strengthen the social contract. For every
    citizen must believe that he or she can have a place in the future we
    are building together. Of course, the only place to start in such an
    endeavor is with our children and their education. It is the best path
    out of poverty, and it is very good for business' future.
        In order to do that, I might also add, we have to give every child a
    chance to go to school by making sure they're not in the workplace
    illegally. The United States is working with Central America to launch a
    new initiative to combat child labor while helping parents to find good
    jobs. Earlier this year, I asked our Congress for a tenfold increase in
    our investment to combat child labor abuses worldwide. I hope our
    neighbors will join us in that fight. Again, no one has a long-term
    interest in taking children who ought to be in school and putting them

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    in the workplace. And over the long run, that will diminish a nation's
    wealth, productivity, and strength.
        We must do more to deepen democracy's roots with a free press, an
    honest, efficient judiciary, strong protections for existing laws on
    working standards. We have to work harder to reduce the gap between rich
    and poor, which has been widening in most industrialized and
    industrializing countries in recent years. We must continue the fight
    together against corruption, drugs, and crime. They erode the fabric of
    all our societies. And we must do more together to protect our
    environment.
        Harnessing the forces of globalization to work for all our citizens
    is literally a challenge for every nation in the world. I just got back
    from a long trip to Africa, and I saw the same thing in every country.
    It will be a major focus of the Summit of the Americas, thanks to the
    leadership of President Frei. It will be at the
    top of the agenda when the G-8 countries meet in Birmingham next month,
    because everybody knows we have to figure out how to do this. Those of
    you in business can help us lead the way.
        In the meeting that the President and I mentioned to you with small
    entrepreneurs and people who had gotten an education and worked their
    way out of poverty, a few moments ago, they didn't talk to us about the
    intricacies of trade, but they did understand education, child care,
    jobs, and access to credit. They will trust us in our respective
    countries to make these big structural decisions, and to make them
    right, as long as they feel that somebody is making some decisions that
    give them a chance to make their future along with ours. Working
    families in that sense, from Santiago to San Diego, may not be all that
    much different.
        I want our nations to work together. And let me say, I have been
    profoundly impressed by President Frei's
    commitment to improve and expand access to education. Chile has doubled
    its social spending since 1990, largely for education--more classrooms,
    longer school days, better access for disadvantaged children. Our
    agreement on education is quite substantive. We've agreed to exchange
    more students and teachers, to develop higher standards of learning and
    teacher training, to work to bring technology into every classroom. And
    I can tell you again, on every continent where I have been where
    education is a crying issue, and many children in small rural areas have
    no access to it, I see how we can skip a generation of development,
    painful development in education, if we make the most of today's
    technology.
        No country can do it without the active, aggressive partnership of
    the business community in every country, and I hope you will help
    President Frei in that regard. You can
    revolutionize the future of Chile's children if you do.
        Let me just make one other substantive point. I have had great
    conversations with the President about what I
    believe is the imperative for all nations to work together on the
    problem of climate change. In many developing economies, there is a
    reluctance to participate in trying to meet the goals announced at Kyoto
    in Japan last year, because many people believe that poor countries
    cannot become rich countries without emitting more greenhouse gases and,
    therefore, that any attempt by the developed countries like the United
    States, who are already big offenders in the greenhouse gases we emit,
    must be some dark conspiracy to hold others down.
        In the first place, that's bad economics, because the United States
    should want all of our trading partners to get wealthier. That is what
    is in our interest. No one is interested in that. But I can tell you
    this--I said before when the President and I had our press conference--
    for 30 years, every time we have sought to improve the environment in
    America, someone has stood up and said, ``If you take this step to clean
    the air, to clean the water, to improve the health of the food supply,
    you will cost jobs and hurt the economy.'' And for 30 years, every
    single step we have taken to improve the environment has helped the
    American economy.
        We can reduce greenhouse gas emissions worldwide and grow the
    economy, and we need to do it in the most comprehensive way possible. I
    respect very much the President's leadership on
    that, but I will make you a prediction that those of us--our successors,
    whoever will be sitting here 15 years from now at a speech like this,
    representing your group, will be overwhelming concerned with the
    condition of the global environment and what it does or does not do for
    their ability to make a good living. So I hope we will deal with this
    now when it will be less painful, instead of waiting until later when it
    will be much more costly.
        Through bold commitments like the FTAA negotiations, to improve
    education, to work on

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    strengthening our justice system and freedom of expression, our new
    hemispheric alliance against drugs, more work to alleviate poverty, the
    Santiago summit that President Frei is chairing
    is going to make a difference to the future of the Americas. We will
    leave the summit with a clear message to the world that Miami was not a
    one-shot effort, that we are broadening our cooperation, but that we
    intend to move forward with more determination across a broader range.
        I know that all of you will support that. What I ask you to do is to
    do all you can to make sure that everyone with whom you work and anyone
    with whom you have contact back in the United States understands what
    we're doing and why.
        In 1811, as Chile struggled for its independence, it chose to
    dedicate its national flag on July 4, which is our Independence Day, at
    a celebration held by United States citizens in Santiago, long, long
    ago. On that day, the American flag and the new Chilean banner were
    raised together in many public places, entwined with one another. At
    last, our partnership can fulfill the potential of those two entwined
    flags, for our goals and our dreams are clearly intertwined. We can make
    them real for tomorrow's generation; we can make the Americas a model of
    hope and unity for the world. We can do it if we follow the lead that I
    have seen set by this great President and this
    great nation. And we're glad to be here.
        Thank you very much.

    Note: The President spoke at 3:50 p.m. in the Teatro Municipal. In his
    remarks, he referred to Alex Fernandez, president, Chilean-American
    Chamber of Commerce; Walter Riesco, president, Confederation of
    Production and Commerce; and Mayor Jaime Ravinet of Santiago.