    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (1999, Book II)]
    [December 1, 1999]
    [Pages 2189-2194]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at a World Trade Organization Luncheon in Seattle
    December 1, 1999

        Thank you very much. Ambassador Barshefsky, thank you for your remarks and your work. Ladies and
    gentlemen, we have a very large delegation from our administration here
    today, and I hope it's evidence to you of our seriousness of purpose. I
    thank the Commerce Secretary, Bill Daley;
    the Agriculture Secretary, Dan Glickman; our
    SBA Administrator, Aida Alvarez, my National
    Economic Councilor, Gene Sperling; Ambassador
    Esserman; and my Chief of Staff, John
    Podesta, all of whom are here, and I thank
    them.
        I want to say that I agree that Mike Moore is
    the ideal person to head the WTO, because he has a sense of humor, and
    boy, do we need it right now. [Laughter] Did you see the gentleman
    holding up the big white napkin here before we started? He was doing
    that to get the light for the television cameras. But he was standing
    here holding the napkin, and Mike whispered to me, he said, ``Well,
    after yesterday, that could be the flag of the WTO.'' [Laughter] We'll
    have rolling laughter as the translation gets through here.
        Let me begin by saying welcome to the United States and to one of
    our most wonderful cities. We are honored to have you here on a very
    important mission. Today I want to talk a little bit about the work that
    we're all here to do: launching a new WTO round for a new century, a new
    type of round that I hope will be about jobs, development, and broadly
    shared prosperity and about improving the quality of life, as well as
    the quality of work around the world, an expanded system of rule-based
    trade that keeps pace with the changing global economy and the changing
    global society.
        Let me begin by saying that 7 years ago when I had the honor to
    become President of the United States, I sat down alone and sort of made
    a list of the things that I hoped could be done to create the kind of
    world that I wanted our children to live in, in the new century, a world
    where the interests of the United States I thought were quite clear: in
    peace and stability; in democracy and prosperity.
        To achieve that kind of world, I thought it was very important that
    the United States support the increasing unity of Europe and the

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    expansion of the European Union; that we support the expansion of NATO
    and its partnership with what are now more than two dozen countries,
    including Russia and Ukraine; that we support the integration of China,
    Russia, and the Indian subcontinent, in particular, into the large
    political and economic flows of our time; that we stand against the
    ethnic and religious conflicts that were still consuming the Middle East
    and Northern Ireland, then Bosnia and later Kosovo; that we do what we
    could to help people all over the world to deal with such things,
    including the tribal wars in Africa.
        And I thought it was important that we give people mechanisms by
    which they could work toward a shared prosperity, which is why we wanted
    to finish the last WTO round; why we are working hard with our friends
    in Europe on a Stability Pact for the Balkans; why we know economics
    must be a big part of the Middle East peace process; why we have an
    Asian-Pacific economic forum where the leaders meet; why we've had two
    Summits of the Americas with our friends in Latin America; why we're
    trying to pass the Africa and Caribbean Basin trade initiatives; and why
    I believe it is imperative that we here succeed in launching a new trade
    round that can command broad support among ordinary citizens in all our
    countries and take us where we want to go.
        There are negative forces I have tried to combat, in addition to the
    forces of hatred based on ethnic or religious difference: the
    terrorists, the problems of disease and poverty, which I hope that the
    large debt relief initiative that we are pushing will help to alleviate.
        But in the end, all of these changes in my view will only give us
    the world we want, where the poorest countries have children that can at
    least live through childhood and where the boys as well as the girls can
    go to school and then have a chance to make a decent living; where
    countries with governance problems can work through them; where wealthy
    countries can continue to prosper but do so in a way that is more
    responsible to helping those who still have a long way to go
    economically; and where, together, we can meet our common
    responsibilities to human needs, to the environment, to the cause of
    world peace. We will not get that done unless we can prove, for all of
    our domestic political difficulties and all of our honest differences,
    we still believe that we can have an interdependent global economy that
    runs alongside our interdependent international information society.
        And we are called upon here to meet against a background of a lot of
    people coming here to protest. Some of them, I think, have a short
    memory, or maybe no memory, of what life was like in most of your
    countries not so very long ago. So let me say again, I condemn the small
    number who were violent and who tried to prevent you from meeting.
        But I'm glad the others showed up, because they represent millions
    of people who are now asking questions about whether this enterprise in
    fact will take us all where we want to go. And we ought to welcome their
    questions and be prepared to give an answer, because if we cannot create
    an interconnected global economy that is increasing prosperity and
    genuine opportunity for people everywhere, then all of our political
    initiatives are going to be less successful. So I ask you to think about
    that.
        When I hear the voices outside the meeting rooms, I disagree with a
    lot of what they say, but I'm still glad they're here. Why? Because
    their voices now count in this debate. For 50 years--one of the reasons
    I said we needed a leader like Mr. Moore, with a
    sense of humor, because for 50 years global trade, even though there
    were always conflicts--you know, the United States and Japan, they're
    our great friends and allies; we're always arguing about something. But
    to be fair, it was a conflict that operated within a fairly narrow band.
    For 50 years, trade decisions were largely the province of trade
    ministers, heads of government, and business interests. But now, what
    all those people in the street tell us is that they would also like to
    be heard. And they're not so sure that this deal is working for them.
        Some of them say, well--and by the way, they're kind of like we are;
    a lot of them are in conflict with each other, right? Because a lot of
    them say, ``Well, this is not a good thing for the developing countries.
    They haven't benefited as much as they should have, while the wealthy
    countries have grown wealthier in this information society.'' Others
    say, ``Well, even if you're growing the economy, you're hurting the
    environment.'' And still others say, ``Well, companies may be getting
    rich in some of these poorer countries, but actual working, laboring
    people are not doing so well.'' And others have other various and sundry
    criticisms of what we have done.

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        I would like to say, first of all, I think we need to do a better
    job of making the basic case. No one in this room can seriously argue
    that the world would have been a better place today if our forebears
    over the last 50 years had not done their work to bring us closer
    together. Whatever the problems that exist in whatever countries
    represented here, whatever the legitimacy of any of the criticism
    against us, this is a stronger, more prosperous world because we have
    worked to expand the frontiers of cooperation and reduce the barriers to
    trade among people. And we need to reiterate our conviction that that is
    true. If we were all out here going on our own, we would not be as well
    off in the world as we are.
        Secondly, at the end of the cold war, I am sure everyone in this
    room has been struck by the cruel irony that in this most modern of
    ages, when the Internet tells us everything, as Mr. Moore said, when we
    are solving all the problems of the human gene, and we will soon know
    what's in the black holes in the universe, it is truly ironic that the
    biggest problems of human society are the oldest ones, those rooted in
    our fear of those who are different from us: different races, different
    ethnic groups, different tribes, different religions, all over the
    world, people consumed by differences.
        When people are working together for common prosperity in a rule-
    based system, they have big incentives to lay the differences down and
    join hands to work together. So if we just make those two points to our
    critics, I think it's very important: Number one, the world is a better
    place than it would have been, had we not had the last 50 years of
    increasing economic cooperation for trade and investment; and number
    two, the world of the future will be a safer place if we continue to
    work together in a rule-based system that offers enormous incentives for
    people to find ways to cooperate and to give up their old hatreds and
    their impulses to violence and war.
        Now having said that, we now have to say: What next? I think we have
    to acknowledge a responsibility, particularly those of us in the
    wealthier countries, to make sure that we are working harder to see that
    the benefits of the global economy are more widely shared among and
    within countries, that it truly works for ordinary people who are doing
    the work for the rest of us. I think we also have to make sure that the
    rules make sense and that we're continuing to make progress,
    notwithstanding the domestic political difficulties that every country
    will face. We all benefit when the rules are clear and fair. I think
    that means we have to cut tariffs further on manufactured goods and set
    equally ambitious goals for services. I think we should extend our
    moratorium on E-commerce. I think we should treat agriculture as we
    treat other sectors of the economy.
        But we all have domestic political constraints. Everybody knows
    that. I think we have to leave this luncheon saying, in spite of that,
    we're going to find some way to keep moving forward because the world
    will be a better place, and the world will be a safer place.
        Now, let me offer a few observations of what I hope will be done.
    First, I think we have to do more to ensure that the least developed
    countries have greater access to global markets and the technical
    assistance to make the most of it.
        Director-General Moore has dedicated himself
    and this organization to extending the benefits of trade to the least
    developed countries, and I thank you for that, sir. Here in Seattle, 32
    developing nations are moving toward admission to the WTO. EU President
    Prodi and I have discussed this whole issue,
    and I have assured him, and I assure you, that the United States is
    committed to a comprehensive program to help the poorest nations become
    full partners in the world trading system. This initiative, which we are
    working on with the EU, Japan, and Canada, would enhance market access
    for products from the least developed countries consistent with our GSP
    preference access program and our Africa and Caribbean Basin
    initiatives, which, I am glad to report, are making good progress
    through the United States Congress.
        Building on our recent collaboration with Senegal, Lesotho, Zambia,
    Bangladesh, and Nigeria, we would also intensify our efforts to help
    developing countries build the domestic institutions they need to make
    the most of trade opportunities and to implement WTO obligations. This
    afternoon I will meet with heads of international organizations that
    provide trade-related technical assistance and ask them to help in this
    effort.
        And I will say this. I do believe, after the Uruguay round, when we
    set up this system, that we did not pay enough attention to the internal
    capacity-building in the developing nations that is necessary to really
    play a part in

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    the global economy. And I am prepared to do my part to rectify that
    omission.
        We also must help these countries avert the health and pollution
    costs of the industrial age. We have to help them use clean technologies
    that improve the economy, the environment, and health care at the same
    time. And I will just give one example.
        Today is World AIDS Day, and today the USTR--our Trade
    Representative--and the Department of Health and Human Services are
    announcing that they are committed to working together to make sure that
    our intellectual property policy is flexible enough to respond to
    legitimate public health crises.
        Intellectual property protections are very important to a modern
    economy, but when HIV and AIDS epidemics are involved and like serious
    health care crises, the United States will henceforward implement its
    health care and trade policies in a manner that ensures that people in
    the poorest countries won't have to go without medicine they so
    desperately need. I hope this will help South Africa and many other
    countries that we are committed to support in this regard.
        More generally, this new round should promote sustainable
    development in places where hunger and poverty still stoke despair. We
    know countries that have opened their economies to the world have also
    opened the doors to opportunity and hope for their own people. Where
    barriers have fallen, by and large, living standards have risen, and
    democratic institutions have become stronger. We have to spread that
    more broadly.
        So secondly, I want to say what I said at the WTO in Geneva last
    year. I think it is imperative that the WTO become more open and
    accessible. While other international organizations have sought and not
    shied from public participation--when that has happened, public support
    has grown. If the WTO expects to have public support grow for our
    endeavors, the public must see and hear and in a very real sense
    actually join in the deliberations. That's the only way they can know
    the process is fair and know their concerns were at least considered.
        We've made progress since I issued this challenge in Geneva last
    year, but I believe there's more work to be done from opening the
    hearing room doors to inviting in a more formal fashion public comment
    on trade disputes.
        Now look, let me just say, I know there's a lot of controversy about
    this. And as all of you know, I'm about to enter the last year of my
    Presidency. I will not be around to deal with the aftermath. But I'm
    telling you, I've been in this business a long time, and in the end, we
    all serve and function at the sufferance of the people, either with
    their active support or their silent acquiescence. What they are telling
    us in the streets here is, this was an issue we used to be silent on.
    We're not going to be silent on it anymore. We haven't necessarily given
    up on trade, but we want to be heard.
        The sooner the WTO opens up the process and lets people representing
    those who are outside in, the sooner we will see fewer demonstrations,
    more constructive debate, and a broader level of support in every
    country for the direction that every single person in this room knows
    that we ought to be taking into the 21st century. So we can do it a
    little bit now and a little bit later. We can drag our feet, or we can
    run through an open door. But my preference is to open the meetings,
    open the records, and let people file their opinions.
        No one, no sensible person expects to win every argument, and no one
    ever does. But in a free society, people want to be heard, and human
    dignity and political reality demand it today.
        Third, as I have said repeatedly, I believe the WTO must make sure
    that open trade does indeed lift living standards, respects core labor
    standards that are essential not only to worker rights but to human
    rights. That's why this year the United States has proposed that the WTO
    create a working group on trade and labor. To deny the importance of
    these issues in a global economy is to deny the dignity of work, the
    belief that honest labor fairly compensated gives meaning and structure
    to our lives. I hope we can affirm these values at this meeting.
        I am pleased that tomorrow I will sign the ILO convention to
    eliminate the worst forms of child labor. And I thank the United States
    Senate on a bipartisan basis for supporting us in this. I believe the
    WTO should collaborate more closely with the ILO, which has worked hard
    to protect human rights, to ban child labor. I hope you will do this.
        Let me say in all candor, I am well aware that a lot of the nations
    that we most hope to support, the developing nations of the world, have
    reservations when the United States says

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    we support bringing labor concerns into our trade debate. And I freely
    acknowledge that, if we had a certain kind of rule, then protectionists
    in wealthy countries could use things like wage differentials to keep
    poorer countries down, to say, ``Okay, you opened your markets to us.
    Now we'll sell to you. But you're selling to us, and we want to keep you
    down, so we'll say you're not paying your people enough.''
        The answer to that is not to avoid this labor issue, not when
    there's still child labor all over the world, not when there are still
    oppressive labor practices all over the world, not when there is still
    evidence in countries that ordinary people are not benefiting from this.
    The answer is not to just throw away the issue. The answer is to write
    the rules in such a way that people in our position, the wealthier
    countries, can't do that, can't use this as an instrument of
    protectionism. We can find a way to do this.
        But there is a sense of solidarity all over the world, among
    ordinary people who get up every day, will never be able to come to a
    luncheon like this, do their work, raise their children, pay their
    taxes, form the backbone of every nation represented here. They deserve
    basic, fundamental decency, and the progress of global trade should
    reflect, also, in their own lives. I do not want the United States, or
    any other country, now or later, to be able to use this as a shield for
    protectionism. But to pretend that it is not a legitimate issue in many
    countries is another form of denial, which I believe will keep the
    global trading system from building the public support it deserves.
        Finally, we must work to protect and to improve the environment as
    we expand trade. Two weeks ago, I signed an Executive order requiring
    careful environmental review of our major trading agreements early
    enough to make a difference, including the input of the public and
    outside experts and considering genuinely held concerns. We stand ready
    to cooperate as you develop similar systems, and to integrate the
    environment more fully into trade policy.
        We are committed to finding solutions which are win-win, that
    benefit both the economy and the environment, open trade and cutting-
    edge clean technologies, which I believe will be the next industrial
    revolution. We will continue to support WTO rules that recognize a
    nation's right to take science-based health, safety, and environmental
    measures, even when they're higher than international standards.
        Now I want to say something about this. Again I know, there are some
    people who believe my concern and the concern of the United States about
    the environment is another way that somehow we can keep the developing
    countries down. That is not true. There are basically two great clusters
    of environmental issues facing the world today. First, there are the
    local issues faced primarily by the developing nations: healthy water
    systems and sewer systems, systems to restrict soil erosion and to
    otherwise promote the public health.
        It is in everyone's interest to help those things to be installed as
    quickly and efficiently as possible. But the real issue that affects us
    all, that prompts my insistence that we put this issue on the agenda, is
    global warming and the related issue of the loss of species in the world
    as a consequence of global warming.
        And the difference in this issue and previous environmental issues
    is this: Once the greenhouse gases get in the atmosphere, they take a
    long time, 100 years or more, to dispel. Therefore, one nation's policy,
    including ours--and we are now the largest emitter of greenhouse gases,
    in the United States. We won't be long, but we are now. But we have to
    do something about this. And I want to say to you what I said to the
    people at our table. There is now clear and compelling scientific,
    technological evidence that it is no longer necessary for a poor country
    growing rich to do so by emitting more greenhouse gas emissions. Or in
    plainer language, a nation can develop a middle class and develop wealth
    without burning more oil and coal in traditional manners. This is a sea
    change in the reality that existed just a few years ago.
        And let's be candid; most people don't believe it. A lot of people
    in our country don't believe it. But in everything from transportation
    to manufacturing to the generation of electricity to the construction of
    buildings, it is now possible to grow an economy with much less injury
    to the atmosphere, with available technologies. And within 5 years
    breathtaking changes in the way automobile engines work and in the way
    fuel is made, especially from biomass, will make these trends even more
    clear.
        I do not believe the United States has the right to ask India or
    Pakistan or China or any other country to give up economic growth. But I
    do believe that all of us can responsibly say, if you can grow at the
    same rate without doing what we did--that is fouling the environment

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    and then cleaning it up; Mr. Kono remembers--I
    remember the first time I went to Tokyo over 20 years ago, people wore
    masks riding their bicycles around, and now the air there is cleaner
    than it is in my hometown in Arkansas.
        What is the difference now? It is not just a national issue. If you
    foul the atmosphere and then you later clean it up, the greenhouse gases
    are still up there, and they'll be there for 100 years, warming the
    climate.
        Now, we do not have a right to ask anybody to give up economic
    growth. But we do have a right to say, if we're prepared to help you
    finance a different path to growth, and we can prove to you--and you
    accept, on the evidence--that your growth will be faster, not smaller,
    that you'll have more good jobs, more new technology, a broader base for
    your economy, then I do believe we ought to have those kind of
    environmental standards. And we ought to do it in a voluntary way with
    available technologies. But we ought to put environment at the core of
    our trade concerns.
        Now I don't know if I've persuaded any of you about any of this. But
    I know one thing: This is a better world than it would have been if our
    forebears hadn't done this for the last 50 years. If we're going to go
    into the next 50 years, we have to recognize that we're in a very
    different environment. We're in a total information society, where
    information has already been globalized, and citizens all over the world
    have been empowered. And they are knocking on the door here, saying,
    ``Let us in, and listen to us. This is not an elite process anymore.
    This is a process we want to be heard in.''
        So I implore you, let's continue to make progress on all the issues
    where clearly we can. Let's open the process and listen to people even
    when we don't agree with them. We might learn something, and they'll
    feel that they've been part of a legitimate process. And let's continue
    to find ways to prove that the quality of life of ordinary citizens in
    every country can be lifted, including basic labor standards and an
    advance on the environmental front.
        If we do this, then 50 years from now the people who will be sitting
    in all these chairs will be able to have the same feelings about you
    that Mr. Moore articulated our feelings for the
    World War II generation.
        Thank you very much, and welcome again.

    Note: The President spoke at 3:05 p.m. in the Spanish Room at the Four
    Seasons Hotel. In his remarks, he referred to Deputy U.S. Trade
    Representative Susan G. Esserman; World Trade Organization Director-
    General Mike Moore; European Commission President Romano Prodi; and
    Minister of Foreign Affairs Yohei Kono of Japan. The President also
    referred to GSP, the Generalized System of Preferences. The Executive
    order on environmental review of trade agreements is listed in Appendix
    D at the end of this volume. A portion of these remarks could not be
    verified because the tape was incomplete.