[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1998, Book II)]
[November 30, 1998]
[Pages 2095-2097]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



[[Page 2095]]


Remarks on Electronic Commerce
November 30, 1998

    Thank you very much. I feel like the fifth wheel here. [Laughter] 
Most of what needs to be said has certainly been said.
    I want to thank the Vice President for his outstanding leadership. I 
thank Secretary Rubin and Ambassador Barshefsky and, in his absence, 
Secretary Daley; Administrator Alvarez, Mr. Podesta, and other members 
of the administration. I thank all the members of the high-tech 
community in various forms and permutations who are here in this 
audience today.
    And I, too, want to thank the Members of Congress for their 
invaluable help. In spite of the ups and downs of partisan debate in 
Washington, this is one area where we've managed to really pull together 
a broad bipartisan coalition of Members of Congress to do a whole series 
of good things for America, through the Internet, over the long run.
    I want to specifically thank Congressman Cox and Senator Wyden for 
sponsoring the Internet Tax Freedom Act. I want to thank Senator Hatch, 
who led the efforts on the copyright protection legislation. I thank 
Senator Burns, the cochair of the Internet caucus and who, along with 
Senators Rockefeller and Dorgan who are here, have played crucial roles 
on the Senate Commerce Committee in passing electronic commerce 
legislation; and Congressman Pickering, who has assisted us in the 
privatization of the domain name system and on many other issues. So I'd 
like to ask you to give these Members of Congress a round of applause. I 
thank them for what they are doing. [Applause]
    I'm very grateful to John Chambers and Meg Whitman for being here 
today and for what they do with their own companies and what they 
represent for our country's future. I've been wondering what I was going 
to do in a couple years. I think I could be a successful trader on eBay, 
you know? [Laughter] At least I know where I can go and get my political 
memorabilia now. [Laughter]
     I always liked John Chambers until I found out he had 70 vice 
presidents. [Laughter] I don't know what to make of that. He's more 
important than I am? He's less efficient than I am? [Laughter] Or one 
great Vice President is enough. How's that? [Laughter]
    I also want to thank my friend of 30 years now, Ira Magaziner, who 
has been acknowledged, and who's here with his wonderful family, for 
years of work, including many months when this work did not get anything 
like this level of attention which it has today.
    As all of you know, Thanksgiving weekend marked the beginning of the 
holiday shopping center and a new holiday tradition. Last year only 10 
percent of those with home computers shopped for holiday gifts on-line; 
this year the figure is predicted to be over 40 percent. On-line 
shoppers are buying everything from the latest electronics to old-time 
Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig baseball cards, thanks to eBay. This new era, 
therefore, will not only transform commerce, it will lift America's 
economy in the 21st century.
    This Thanksgiving I had a chance again to give thanks for these good 
times in our country. Less than a decade ago, people were worrying that 
America could not keep up with global competition. Today, we have the 
strongest economy in a generation, about 17 million new jobs, the 
largest real wage growth in 20 years, the lowest unemployment in 28 
years, the smallest percentage of people on welfare in 29 years. And 
we're leading the world in the technologies of the future, from 
telecommunications to biotechnology.
    The qualities rewarded in this new economy--flexibility, innovation, 
creativity, enterprise--are qualities that have long been associated 
with Americans and our economy. We have to keep this momentum going. 
That's really what we're here to celebrate, ratify, and commit ourselves 
to today.
    I think the first thing we have to do is to stay with the economic 
policies that have worked for the last 6 years: fiscal discipline, 
expanding trade, investing in education and research and development. I 
think we have to do more work here at home to expand the benefits of the 
economic recovery to areas and people who have not yet felt it, and I 
believe the Internet has an enormous potential role to play there.
    I believe, to keep this going, we're going to have to do more to 
contain the economic crisis in the world, to reverse it in Asia, and to 
deal

[[Page 2096]]

with the long-term challenges to global financial markets, which 
Secretary Rubin and I and others are working very hard on.
    But finally, I think we have to clearly commit ourselves to making 
the most of what is clearly the engine of tomorrow's economy: 
technology. We have to make ourselves absolutely committed to the 
proposition that we will first do no harm, we will do nothing that 
undermines the capacity of emerging technologies to lift the lives of 
ordinary Americans; and secondly, that, insofar as we can, we will help 
to create an environment which will enhance the likelihood of success. 
That is what we are fundamentally celebrating today and committing 
ourselves to for tomorrow.
    Information technology now accounts for more than a third of our 
economic growth. It has boosted our productivity and reduced inflation 
by a full percentage point. Obviously, few applications of this 
technology have more power than electronic commerce. If all the sales 
being conducted over the Internet were taking place at one shopping 
mall, that mall would have to be 30 times the size of the largest mall 
in the world, Minnesota's Mall of America. Five years from now we would 
need a facility 1,000 times the size of the Mall of America to handle 
the volume of sales.
    Now, to fulfill this promise, we have to create the conditions for 
electronic entrepreneurs. You've heard that discussed. That's why I 
asked the Vice President to coordinate and Ira Magaziner to work on 
building a framework for global economic commerce back in late 1995. 
That's why we committed ourselves to the proposition that the Internet 
should be a free-trade zone with incentives for competition, protection 
for consumers and children, supervised not by governments but by people 
who use the Internet every day.
    This year 132 nations followed the U.S. lead by signing a 
declaration to refrain from imposing customs duties on electronic 
commerce. We reached agreements supporting our market-driven approach 
with the European Union, Japan, and other nations. Today the Australian 
Prime Minister and I will issue a joint statement along these same 
lines. Working with Congress, industry, State and local officials, we 
passed a law to put a 3-year moratorium on new and discriminatory taxes 
on electronic commerce. And again, I thank Secretary Rubin and Deputy 
Secretary Summers for their work on that.
    We ratified an international treaty to protect intellectual property 
on-line. We made it possible to conduct official transactions 
electronically. We secured the funds to challenge the Nation's research 
community to develop the next generation Internet. We passed a law to 
protect the privacy of our children on-line. We're working with 
companies representing a large share of the Internet traffic to help 
them meet our privacy guidelines. We have effectively privatized the 
Internet's domain name and routing systems. We have moved to improve the 
security and reliability of cyberspace by focusing attention on 
protecting critical infrastructures and solving the Y2K computer 
problem.
    Now, that's a pretty impressive line of work for all concerned. But 
we see there are still challenges to overcome. Many people who surf the 
Web still don't shop there. They worry they won't get what they thought 
they were paying for; they'll have nowhere to go if they get cheated. 
We've already begun to address these fears, not with burdensome 
regulations that might stifle growth and innovation but with incentives 
for on-line companies to offer customers the protections they need.
    We must do more. Our country has some of the strongest consumer 
protections in the world. Today I ask Secretary Daley to work with the 
FTC and other agencies, consumer advocates, industry, and our trading 
partners to develop new approaches to extend the proud tradition of 
consumer protection into cyberspace, to ensure truthful advertising and 
full disclosure of information are the foundations of global electronic 
commerce. People should get what they pay for on-line; it should be easy 
to get redress if they don't. We must give consumers the same protection 
in our virtual mall they now get at the shopping mall.
    And if the virtual mall is to grow, we must help small businesses 
and families gain access to the same services at the same speeds that 
big business enjoys. For many people, connections are so slow that 
shopping at the virtual mall is filled with frustration. It is as if 
they had to drive over dirt roads to get to the mall, only to find an 
endless line of customers just waiting to get into the door. So today 
I'll also direct Secretary Daley and Ambassador Barshefsky to work with 
the FCC and our trading partners to promote greater competition to bring 
advanced high-speed connections into our homes and small businesses, to 
ensure that the

[[Page 2097]]

Internet continues to evolve in ways that will benefit all our people.
    Our Nation was founded at the dawn of a period not so very unlike 
this one, a period of enormous economic upheaval when the world was 
beginning to move from an agrarian to an industrial economy. Alexander 
Hamilton, our first Secretary of the Treasury, understood these changes 
well. In his remarkable ``Report on Manufactures'' and other of his 
writings, Hamilton identified new ways to harness the changes then going 
on so that our Nation could advance.
    Listen to this. He proposed what many thought were radical ideas at 
the time: a central bank, a common currency, a national system of roads 
and canals, a crackdown on fraud so that American products would be 
known all over the world for quality. He created the blueprint that made 
possible America's industrial age and, many of us believe, the 
preservation of the American Union.
    Today, we are drawing up the blueprints for a new economic age, not 
for starting big institutions but for freeing small entrepreneurs. We 
have the honor of designing the architecture for a global economic 
marketplace, with stable laws, strong protections for consumers, serious 
incentives for competition, a marketplace to include all people and all 
nations.
    Now, I may not know as much about cable modems and T-1 lines as the 
Vice President--[laughter]--I think we made a living of jokes out of 
that for 6 years. But I do know, thanks to his and others' work, that 
electronic commerce gives us an extraordinary opportunity to usher in 
the greatest age of prosperity not only Americans but people all over 
the world have ever known.
    To me, the most moving thing said from this podium today involved 
the stories of people in Africa and Latin America lifting themselves 
from abject poverty through access to the Internet. That can happen to 
more than a billion other people in ways that benefit all of us, if we 
do this right.
    We have made a good beginning. I am confident we will finish the 
job.
    Thank you very much.

Note: The President spoke at 12:02 p.m. in Room 450 of the Old Executive 
Office Building. In his remarks, he referred to John Chambers, chief 
executive officer, Cisco Systems; Meg Whitman, chief executive officer, 
eBay; and Prime Minister John Howard of Australia. The transcript 
released by the Office of the Press Secretary also included the remarks 
of Vice President Al Gore.