    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (1999, Book II)]
    [November 30, 1999]
    [Pages 2180-2184]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Telephone Interview With Michael Paulson of
    the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in San Francisco, California
    November 30, 1999

        The President. How are you?
        Mr. Paulson. I'm good. How are you doing?
        The President. I'm great. I'm going to the San Francisco Airport, on
    my way to L.A. and then to Seattle.

    Disruption of the Seattle Round

        Mr. Paulson. Excellent. So as far as you know, are there still talks
    taking place? We just heard on CNN, claiming that the talks are actually
    canceled, which--we don't even know if that's true.

    [[Page 2181]]

        The President. Well, that's certainly news to me. I heard that the
    talks were still going on.
        Mr. Paulson. I'm sure you've heard it's been kind of a chaotic day
    here. Do you regret choosing Seattle as the location for this? Do you
    wish you were heading some place sunny, like Honolulu and San Diego?
        The President. Well, I don't think the--I think certainly if we had
    had it any place in the continental United States, we would have had the
    same thing. And even if we had gone to Honolulu, there might have been
    thousands of people there.
        What I regret is not that there are protesters there. I have
    supported the right of people whose interests represent labor union, who
    represent environmental groups, people who represent the poorer
    countries of the world coming and expressing their opinions. And I've
    repeatedly said I thought the WTO process was too closed. It ought to be
    opened up, and labor and environmental interests ought to be
    represented, and it ought to be fair for poor countries as well as
    wealthy countries. What I regret is that a small number of people have
    done nonpeaceful things and have tried to block access and to prevent
    meetings. That's wrong. It's not only illegal; it's just wrong.
        On the other hand, I think the larger number of people that are
    there, for peaceful purposes, are healthy. I think what they represent
    is that in the last 5 years you've seen a dramatic change. Trade is now
    no longer the province of CEO's, organized interest groups that deal
    with the economy, and political leaders. It's now--we not only live in a
    global economy. You've got a global information society, and this whole
    process is being democratized. And we're going to have to build a new
    consensus that goes down deeper into every society about what kind of
    trade policy we want. And I think that is, on balance, a healthy thing.
        Anyway, that's kind of where I am on it. I regret very much that a
    few people have given the protesters a bad name, because I think the
    fact that the protesters are there--were it not for those stopping
    meetings, stopping movements, not being peaceful--would be a positive.

    Protesters and the World Trade Organization

        Mr. Paulson. Right. What is your theory about why people are so
    upset here?
        The President. Well, for one thing, I think that a lot of people
    feel threatened by all these changes that are going on in the global
    economy and the process by which the decisions are made--changing the
    rules of trade--are made by people who generally have not been very
    accountable. I mean, the whole WTO--I went to Geneva last year to tell
    them they ought to open their records.
        Mr. Paulson. Right.
        The President. I mean, they have secret proceedings and things of
    that kind.
        For another thing, a lot of times when decisions have been made,
    they aren't honored. The United States won 22 out of 24 cases we filed,
    and in several cases the people say, ``Well, so what?''
        And then I think, finally, there are people who question whether
    these trading rules are benefiting lower income countries, poor
    countries, and who question whether they're a damage to the environment
    from certain trading arrangements that wouldn't otherwise be there, and
    who question whether this is a race to the bottom or the top--so that
    labor unions in wealthier countries want to have certain basic, core
    labor standards observed in poorer countries because they think it will
    be better for average people, so that the trading system actually
    benefits them. So I think that is bringing all those people out.

    Goals of the Seattle Round

        Mr. Paulson. What in your mind will make this week a success or a
    failure?
        The President. Well, I think if we can continue to negotiate and can
    reach some accord on the terms under which to start a new trade round
    and if I can persuade more of my colleagues that if you don't want
    people like the protesters outside of every trade meeting from now until
    the end of time, they're going to have to open the process so that the
    voices of labor, the environment, and the developing countries can be
    heard and so that the decisions are transparent, the records are open,
    and the consequences are clear, we're going to continue to have
    problems.
        And I think, on balance, the world is much better off because we've
    expanded trade over the last 50 years. And I bet you a lot of the
    protesters came to the protest wearing shoes that were made in other
    countries, using cell phones, and maybe a lot of them drove cars that
    were made----
        Mr. Paulson. Right.

    [[Page 2182]]

        The President. ----or foreign manufactured. We live in a global
    economy that on balance has been quite good for the United States, but
    also good for developing countries. But we've got to make a better case
    down deeper into society. It's not just trying to convince a few elites
    in every society that the system of integrated trade on fair and open
    terms is good for them.

    Labor Issues, Trade Sanctions, and the WTO

        Mr. Paulson. Let me ask you about labor, which, you know, is a big
    issue here. What is your position on allowing trade sanctions against
    countries that violate core labor standards?
        The President. I think what we ought to do, first of all, is to
    adopt the United States position on having a working group on labor
    within the WTO. And then that working group should develop these core
    labor standards, and then they ought to be a part of every trade
    agreement. And ultimately, I would favor a system in which sanctions
    would come for violating any provision of a trade agreement. But we've
    got to do this in steps.
        I do think it is worth noting that the strongest opposition to this
    position, however, come from the leaders of developing countries,
    including a lot of developing countries that have leftwing governments,
    not rightwing governments, who believe that this is a strategy by the
    American labor movement to keep them down and keep them poor and keep
    them from selling products that they would otherwise be highly
    competitive in, in the American market.
        Mr. Paulson. Right. Are they right?
        The President. Well, I don't think so. That is, it certainly could
    be used that way. But what the American labor movement has a right, it
    seems to me, to is to know that their brothers and sisters throughout
    the world are actually going to be benefiting from expanded trade.
        When I ran for President, there were some countries, small countries
    in the Caribbean where we had dramatically expanded trade in the years
    before I became President, where average hourly wages had fallen during
    the time trade had expanded and the incomes of the countries had gone
    up. That's not right.
        So I wouldn't support labor's objectives if I thought they were just
    purely protectionist and they didn't want Americans to compete with
    people from other places, because we can compete quite well. And for
    every job we've lost in America, we've gained two or three more. That's
    why we've got 19.8 million jobs in the last 7 years. We never had job
    growth like this before. And the trade-related jobs pay higher wages. So
    if I thought the labor agenda was purely protectionist, I wouldn't be
    for that.
        On the other hand, I think it is legitimate to say that if people
    are out there working and selling their projects in the international
    arena and Americans are going to buy them and Europeans are going to buy
    them--all of us who come from wealthy countries where most people have
    the basic necessities of life--we ought not to buy from countries that
    violate the child labor norms; we ought not to buy from countries that
    basically oppress their workers with labor conditions and lack of a
    living income. And there is a way to strike the right balance here so
    that we put a more human face on the global economy.
        I feel the same way about environmental standards.

    Sovereignty, Environmental Issues, and the WTO

        Mr. Paulson. That's the subject I want to ask you about next. As you
    know, critics are pointing at cases like the shrimp-turtle dispute and
    saying that corporate lawyers, meeting in secret, can invalidate U.S.
    laws. Are we yielding some of our sovereignty in being part of the WTO?
        The President. Well, we yield the right to be unilateral and not
    bound by a system of rules every time we join any kind of organization.
    I mean, if you join any kind of organization in which there are going to
    be disputes, you can't say that ``I'll only follow the rules when we
    win.''
        Mr. Paulson. Right.
        The President. And you can't say that any organization made up of
    human beings will be error-free. But I know there was a lot of concern
    about the way the turtle case was handled. There is also--earlier the
    Venezuelan oil----
        Mr. Paulson. Right.
        The President. ----where we had a lot of concerns. But I think the
    answer to that is to make sure that these environmental standards are
    properly integrated into the WTO deliberation and that we agree that
    countries ought to have more leeway on higher environmental standards
    than in other areas.
        And again, some people in the developing countries may say, well,
    that's a protectionist

    [[Page 2183]]

    strategy. But from my point of view, it is not at all. I think that with
    climate change being the number one environmental problem in the world,
    it is a mistake not to take into account the environmental consequences,
    to not only a particular nation but to the climate as a whole, to
    anything that leads to accelerated deforestation or the increase in
    greenhouse gas emission.
        But see, I've got a whole different take on this than most people
    do. I believe that one of the biggest economic as well as environmental
    problems the world has today is that most decisionmakers, not only in
    the United States but in all the developing countries, still believe the
    only way to get rich is the way the U.S. and Europe got rich in the
    industrial era, by burning more coal, burning more oil, putting more
    greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. And then countries say, ``When we
    get as rich as they are, then we'll turn around and clean it up.'' But
    as you know, with climate change, it doesn't work that way. If you warm
    the climate, you put all this stuff into the air, it takes between 50
    and 100 years to turn a lot of this around.
        But we know now that it is technologically possible to grow the
    economy and reduce greenhouse gas emission, if you're a rich country,
    and stabilize them, if you're a poor country, by taking a totally
    different energy course into the future. The technologies are available
    right now. And that's what I think we have to sell people on. And then
    we've got to really work hard to get these technologies widely
    disseminated into the developing economies, so that India, China, these
    other places can use them to create jobs and raise income while they
    protect their environment. That's a sale we've got to make. And it ought
    to be part of the decisionmaking process of the WTO to promote that
    policy.

    U.S. Goals in the Seattle Round

        Mr. Paulson. Let me ask you one last question. What is the U.S.
    willing to give up at these talks? I mean, these are negotiations, and
    other countries would like to talk about our antidumping laws. What can
    we put on the table?
        The President. Well, first of all, I think we ought to support the
    general rules that reduce tariffs and other trade barriers. And we ought
    to be for accelerating access to our market, for countries that follow
    responsible policies. That's at the heart of my Caribbean Basin
    initiative and my Africa trade bill, and I have reached out to those
    countries to try to do that. And we ought to do that.
        But I would not be for giving up our dumping laws, and I'll tell you
    why: because we already have the most open markets in the world. We
    have--when the Asian economy collapsed in '97, we could have closed our
    markets, and we didn't. And so it exploded our trade deficit. Our trade
    deficit is about 4 percent of our income now.
        I'm for open borders because we get more products at lower cost, and
    it's a great pressure against inflation coming back into our economy.
    And we still have created almost 20 million jobs. But I don't think it's
    right to allow a temporary economic emergency to lead to a surge of
    steel dumping, for example, like we went through, and then to throw a
    lot of Americans out of business in capital-intensive industries who
    might not be able to get back into business, just because of an economic
    crisis somewhere else and because nobody else will take the products. I
    mean, for the Europeans to tell us we should stop dumping, when during
    the Asian crisis we bought literally 10 times as much foreign steel as
    they did, is a little ludicrous--when they have absolute quotas on the
    number of foreign cars they will buy, that we don't have--is ludicrous.
        So we can't give up our dumping laws as long as we have the most
    open markets in the world, and we keep them open to help these countries
    keep going, and other countries don't do the same. They shouldn't be
    able to take advantage of temporary economic developments to do
    something that otherwise the free market economy wouldn't support.
        If you look at what our steel industry did, they shed over half of
    their employment; they spent billions of dollars modernizing technology.
    They were, under normal circumstances, internationally competitive. They
    should not have been put out of business by people dumping from Japan,
    from Russia, from any other country during the period of crisis that we
    just went through.

    Disruption of the Seattle Round

        Mr. Paulson. Okay. So as far as you know, the talks are still on,
    right? You haven't learned anything----
        The President. Yes. While we've been talking, as far as I know,
    they're still on. And I think

    [[Page 2184]]

    they ought to stay on. And I think, again, if we can just get by the few
    people that are being--that aren't being peaceful and the people that
    are trying to stop people from meeting, I think the presence of others
    with legitimate questions about the WTO process, the environment and
    labor and how poor countries are treated, I think this can be a net
    positive because we're going to have to build a much deeper consensus
    for global trade to carry it forward.
        Mr. Paulson. Okay. We'll see you tomorrow.
        The President. Thank you.

    Note: The President spoke at approximately 4:50 p.m from the
    Presidential motorcade en route to San Francisco International Airport.
    This interview was released by the Office of the Press Secretary on
    December 1. A tape was not available for verification of the content of
    this interview.