    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1999, Book I)]
    [June 12, 1999]
    [Pages 931-935]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    [[Page 931]]

    Commencement Address at the University of Chicago in Chicago, Illinois
    June 12, 1999

        Thank you very much. President Sonnenschein, members of the faculty, distinguished guests; to the
    family and friends and the graduates. I was very interested to hear the
    account of William McKinley's trip here and wondering how many of you
    would rather it had rained. [Laughter] You wouldn't be so hot, and you'd
    be assured of a short speech. [Laughter]
        Let me say to those who have spoken before, to the three student
    speakers and to Dr. Fuchs, I appreciate what you said, and I was very impressed
    by it. I'm also delighted to see Dr. Janet Rowley here, to whom I recently presented the National Medal of
    Science, a great tribute to her and to this great institution.
        I got asked a lot of interesting questions by the students as they
    were passing by and were shaking hands. Some were wondering what I could
    possibly be thinking about as 850 of you went by. One of the things I
    was thinking about was, how can I make this speech shorter for you?
    [Laughter] And I would like to summarize what I came here to say.
        Originally, I wanted to come here to talk about the global economy
    in which you will live and work and the society which embraces it and
    what challenges we face in shaping it in the best possible way. I know
    that is of concern to a lot of people here because so many of the
    graduates went by with their little white stickers that said, ``Fair
    trade, not free trade: I signed the pledge.'' Right? You did? [Applause]
    That's what that means; that means that we're worried about this global
    economy. We're not sure it's working in a way that's fair.
        And I would like to speak primarily about that, but I also would
    like to say just a word or two in the beginning about what is happening
    in Kosovo, because I think it is symptomatic of the world that you will
    or will not face.
        Don't you think it's interesting--look around the senior class here,
    all of you that went through and got your degrees--as America grows more
    and more diverse, as we live in a world where, near as I can tell, the
    number of webpages on the Internet is growing by about a million a day,
    where soon the mysteries of the human genome will be unlocked and many
    of you when you have your first children will be able to get a roadmap
    to your child's health and the problems in ways that will preserve life
    and quality of life in a manner undreamed of just a few years ago, that
    in all this modern age which embraces you and toward which you look,
    that the biggest problem the world has today is really the oldest
    problem of human society: We are naturally afraid of people who are
    different from us.
        And it is quite an easy thing for fear to be transformed into
    hatred, to be transformed into dehumanizing the other, and then to be
    transformed into a justification for uprooting or killing them. That is
    what is going on in Kosovo.
        We have--my administration and I, my wife and I, my Vice President
    and I--all of us have personally committed ourselves for over 6\1/2\
    years now to working for peace in the Middle East, in Northern Ireland,
    anyplace in the world where the United States could be a positive force
    to get people to lay down their racial, their ethnic, their tribal,
    their religious hatreds.
        We intervened militarily in Kosovo because I believe that when
    ethnic hatred and fighting turns into the mass slaughter and uprooting
    of totally innocent civilians, if we have the power to stop it, we ought
    to. It took us 4 years before action was taken in Bosnia when the same
    thing happened, and by that time a quarter of a million people had died,
    and 2\1/2\ million people had become refugees.
        In Rwanda 700,000 people were slaughtered in just 100 days. We were
    caught flat-footed. And for 4 years I have worked to train the
    militaries of many African countries so that we can work together to
    stop anything like that from ever happening again on the continent of
    Africa.
        And today the NATO forces, the British defense, the Americans, and
    others to come, soon to be nearly 30 countries, moved into Kosovo. We
    are determined to reverse the ethnic cleansing. We look forward to
    working with Russia and others who may not have agreed with our military
    campaign but do agree with the proposition that all the people of that
    tiny land, Serb and Albanian alike, should be able to live in

    [[Page 932]]

    peace and dignity. You will have to decide. [Applause] Thank you.
        One of the things that you will have to decide is how much you care
    about that. There are serious people who say that we should not have
    done this because, at least nominally, Kosovo is a part of Serbia; so no
    matter how lamentable the human suffering was, no one should have done
    anything about it. We should have just said, ``We're very sorry. We wish
    you would stop. And if you want to do it, no one will stop you.'' I
    think that would have been a terrible mistake. But you will have to
    decide.
        Soon all of you will be in the position of responsibility, of
    decisionmaking. But if you just look around at the people who got their
    diplomas today, people from every conceivable culture, every country,
    all kinds of racial groups, doubtless every conceivable political view,
    free people will normally work out their differences and their
    challenges in a good and satisfactory way if the rules of engagement are
    fair and decent and people treat each other with respect and honor their
    fundamental human dignity.
        I believe we did a good thing in Kosovo. It is perhaps the first
    conflict ever fought where no one wanted any land or money or
    geopolitical advantage. We just wanted to stop and reverse ethnic
    cleansing and stand up for the proposition that in the 21st century
    world all of us ought to be able to live and work together. Even when we
    don't get along, even if we fight, the innocent civilians should not be
    swept up, en masse, as they were there. I hope you will uphold that
    principle when you're in a position to make decisions.
        Now let me give you a summary of what I meant to say--I came here to
    say, about the economy. All of you are already, by definition, having
    graduated from this great university, guaranteed winners in the global
    economy. It's an interesting place. Why? For one thing, you're almost
    certainly far more computer literate than any of your parents, in a
    world that is linked together increasingly by ties of both communication
    and commerce.
        The world is growing increasing democratic, also increasingly
    digital, increasingly interactive. Listen to this: Every single day a
    half a million airline passengers, 1.4 billion E-mail messages, and $1.5
    trillion cross national borders. There are now over 7 billion E-mail
    messages every day just within the United States, but over a billion
    cross national borders; over $1\1/2\ trillion moving around the world
    every day.
        This is a world economy the United States had a lot to do with
    creating and one from which we have, doubtless, richly benefited, with
    the strongest economy we have enjoyed perhaps in our entire history. But
    it is not an economy or a society free of challenges. So while we
    embrace the idea that free societies and free markets can create
    enormous economic opportunity, I wanted to come here to this campus,
    where long ago it was proclaimed that economic and political freedom are
    indivisible, to say that we now know, as a newer group of scholars here
    have told us, that the power and logic of the free market needs--to
    fully succeed--enduring, strong social institutions that preserve the
    integrity of work and family, of community and nation.
        They do so by ensuring the integrity of the market, moderating the
    cycles of boom and bust, and building a social safety net and the
    opportunity for all to move up the ladder. A legal framework of mutual
    responsibility and social safety is not destructive to the market; it is
    essential to its success.
        And all of us know that the problem with the new global economy is
    that it is both more rewarding and more destructive. More people are
    doing well, but more are also being left behind, sometimes whole
    countries left behind. The aggregate debt of sub- Saharan Africa, for
    example, today is twice the annual income.
        So the question is, how can we create a global economy with a human
    face, one that rewards work everywhere, one that gives all people a
    chance to improve their lot and still raise their families in dignity
    and support communities that are coming together, not being torn apart?
        It is, actually, the same question the United States was facing when
    President McKinley came here 100 years ago, except we were asking, ``How
    can we create a national economy that can deal with this vast uprooting
    of people moving from the farm to the factory, from rural areas to the
    cities? How do we deal with the abuses of child labor? How do we deal
    with all the problems that were created when, to be sure, vast new
    opportunities were established, but there was so much churning change it
    was difficult to believe that there would be a net result in social
    justice for ordinary people?''
        Well, through the Progressive Era, all the way through the New Deal,
    for more than 20 years,

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    the American people worked through their Government to try to develop a
    national economy with a human face.
        What did they do? They created the Federal reserve law. They then
    created the regulatory agencies that preserve the integrity of our
    markets, the securities and exchange laws, the commodities laws that
    govern the Chicago commodities market. They created economic policies to
    moderate the cycle of boom and bust. And they created a social safety
    net to try to give everybody the chance to be a part of our life. They
    guaranteed the right of people to organize at work and to get a decent
    education. And after the Second World War, they opened up higher
    education to middle class people on a massive scale. And we're still
    living with the benefits in the United States of America.
        Our task is to advance these same values in the international
    economy. I don't ask you to agree with my prescriptions, but I ask you
    to agree that this is a challenge. To pretend that all the answers are
    self-evident, after all we have seen just in the last 5 years, would be
    folly.
        The first thing we have to do is to keep our own country on the
    cutting edge of progress and change. That means we have to continue
    legitimate investments in the research of tomorrow, just as Government
    support led to splitting the atom beneath Stagg Field a half a century
    ago, and Government support helped to create the Internet just a very
    few years ago, which set off a chain reaction that in its own way was
    more powerful than the chain reaction of the atom.
        One study shows today the Internet economy generates $300 billion in
    revenue, provides 1.2 million jobs. Seven new people join the Internet
    every second. So should the Government help to create the next
    generation of Internet, a thousand times faster than today, able to
    transmit the contents of the Encyclopedia Britannica every second? I
    think the answer is yes.
        The spread of this technology to tens of millions of ordinary
    citizens will not only increase productivity; it will democratize
    economic opportunity. It will give us a freedom web in a world
    transformed.
        The second thing we have to do is to figure out how to make the
    choice between the things on the sticker go away, free trade and fair
    trade. We have to figure out how to build a system that is both free and
    fair and not just for workers in the United States but in other
    countries of the world.
        I would like to say, first of all, a few facts. The United States
    has 4\1/2\ percent of the world's population, 22 percent of its income.
    We cannot sustain our standard of living unless we sell some things to
    other people. It won't happen.
        Secondly, it is simply not true that trade has, on balance, been a
    negative for the United States or for other countries. Millions and
    millions, hundreds of millions of people have moved to middle class
    existences around the world because of more open borders and more open
    trade.
        Third, it is true that trade can lead to disruptions and that some
    of them are not justified by economic forces. The problems facing the
    steel industry today, because of dumping into our markets after the
    collapse of the Asian economy and the Russian economy for the last 2
    years, is a good example of that.
        So the trick is to find a way, first of all, to help people who are
    unavoidably dislocated to start a new life if what they are doing cannot
    be sustained in the economy; secondly, to enforce our trade laws
    vigorously if people are unfairly discriminated against; and thirdly, to
    continue to expand trade but on terms that benefit all people.
        I have long believed that a strong economy in a foreign land is not
    a threat to our jobs; it's a new market for America's products, an
    engine of human dignity and environmental preservation, a partner for
    peace and freedom and security. But I strongly believe that the only way
    to do that is to have trade agreements that lift everybody up, not pull
    everybody down. They shouldn't undermine labor rights or environmental
    standards. They should enhance labor standards and environmental
    protection all across the world.
        Presidents have used trade talks to protect interests in
    intellectual property and interest in food safety. I want Congress to
    give me the ability to use trade talks to protect the environment and
    the rights of workers, as well.
        I want us to stand for the right to organize against an end to
    forced labor and especially against abusive child labor. You know, in
    many, many communities around the world, tens of millions of children
    work in conditions that shock the conscience and send the products to us
    and to other wealthy countries.

    [[Page 934]]

        Last year we increased by 10 times our efforts to stop abusive child
    labor around the globe. Today I'm directing all State and Federal
    agencies to make absolutely sure they're not buying any products of
    abusive child labor. Next week I am going to Switzerland to seek a
    worldwide agreement to ban the worst child labor in every nation in the
    world.
        But I ask you to think about this. People will say, ``Well, we're a
    poor country. We have to earn money however we can.'' If you could see
    the conditions these 8- and 9-year-old children are working in, if you
    want them to go to school, if you understand those countries will never
    grow until they begin to educate their children--the girls as well as
    their boys, which is a big issue in a lot of countries--we have to start
    with the abolition of child labor.
        Meanwhile, I think we ought to continue to expand trade. We ought to
    enforce our agreements more vigorously. But I do not believe that a
    country with 4\1/2\ percent of the world's people can maintain its
    standard of living if we don't have more customers. We did it for a year
    last year, but we can't do it over the long run.
        I want to do more with our friends in Africa and Central America and
    the Caribbean. I want to bring China into the World Trade Organization
    on fair and strong terms. I want to resist quotas but to vigorously
    enforce our trade laws. I do believe you can have fair and freer trade.
    But we'll have to work at it.
        Very briefly, you heard me say that $1\1/2\ trillion crosses
    national borders every day. There are now problems with the global
    financial economy, completely independent of the global trading system;
    $1\1/2\ trillion is way more than the total value of trade in goods and
    services every day. There has become an independent market for money in
    itself, as you would imagine.
        But what happens is, even though this free flow of capital has
    helped a lot of countries to grow wealthy, it has also increased the
    vulnerability to rapid ups and downs and shocks and instability. Over
    the long run, countries that have suffered in the last 2 years, like
    Korea and Thailand, are still much better off than they were 10 years
    ago. But we have to do more to tame the cycles of boom and bust in the
    global economy, and we are working hard on that.
        I'm going to Europe next week to talk to the leaders of the large
    industrial nations about the other steps we have to take. We have to
    spread the benefits of global growth more widely. It is in our interests
    for other countries to do better. The global community cannot survive as
    a tale of two cities: one modern and integrated, a cell phone in every
    hand, a McDonald's on every street corner; the other mired in poverty
    and increasingly resentful, covered with public health and environmental
    problems no one can manage.
        We have to widen the circle of opportunity. We should invest more in
    the education of children around the world. We should invest more in
    helping people deal with public health problems, like AIDS, and helping
    people turn back their serious environmental problems. And we must
    reduce the burden of debt on the poorest countries of the world.
        Today our Treasury Secretary, Bob Rubin,
    is putting forth a proposal to more than triple debt relief for the
    world's poorest nations and then to target the savings they will get to
    the education, health care, and alleviation of poverty of their
    citizens. It is a good thing, and I hope the people of the United States
    will support it.
        Finally, I believe perhaps the greatest thing that will occupy you
    for the next 20 to 30 years on this front is the need to find a way to
    grow the global economy and to continue to improve the environment and,
    specifically, to reduce greenhouse gases so that we can avert further
    global warming.
        It's interesting to me that some people say this is not a problem at
    all, and others say it can only be solved by actions that will weaken
    our economy. I disagree. We now have the technology--for the first time
    in history, in the last few years, we have the technology to grow a big
    economy without industrial-age energy use.
        This is a university of big ideas. If you want to leave here with
    just one idea, don't let anybody convince you that the only way America
    can have a strong economy, the only way India can grow its economy, the
    only way China can grow its economy is to maintain the same sort of
    energy use patterns, with huge emissions of greenhouse gases making big
    contributions to global warming, that we used for the last 50 years. It
    is not true.
        And I have asked the Congress to provide tax incentives to the
    private sector and further research, to make sure we can make this
    technology widely available. I issued an order last

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    week to the Federal Government that will cut our greenhouse gas
    emissions in Federal buildings by 30 percent over the next few years.
    I'm telling you, we can do this on presently available technology.
        But we are in the grip of an old idea. Many people in America are.
    People all over the world are. We have got to join together to learn how
    to alleviate poverty around the world, expand the middle class
    everywhere, provide more economic opportunity for all of you who are so
    well-positioned, and still understand that we can reduce pollution and
    environmental problems and global warming. It is not true anymore that
    you have to destroy the environment to grow the economy, and you can
    lead the charge in turning the world away from that.
        But that's what I want to say to you about the economy you're moving
    into. We have not made the adjustments to put a human face on the global
    economy that we made in the early decades of this century to put a human
    face on our national economy. It will require a trading system that is
    both freer and fairer. It will require the alleviation of debt in the
    poorest countries. It will require the respect of environmental and
    labor rights in all countries. It will require new investments in
    education and health care.
        It will require a genuine commitment--a genuine commitment--to the
    proposition that societies should be free, but they should be coherent;
    that we should always be able to balance work with family and community;
    and that what unites us is profoundly more important than all of our
    differences. I hope that that is the world of your future, the world
    that you will make.
        Thank you, congratulations, and God bless you.

    Note: The President spoke at 12:50 p.m. in the quad at the University of
    Chicago. In his remarks, he referred to Hugo F. Sonnenschein, president,
    Elaine Fuchs and Janet D. Rowley, professors, and Ana Christina Faria,
    Thymaya O'Brien Payne, and Michael Rossman, students, University of
    Chicago. The Executive order of June 12 on child labor and the Executive
    order of June 3 on Government energy management are listed in Appendix D
    at the end of this volume.